Today, I'm hosting a promo spotlight on Charlotte Stein's latest erotic contemporary romance, Forbidden (Under the Skin #2), as a part of the ongoing VBT. In the following, also find teasers and excerpt for your enjoyment. The giveaway includes 5 ebooks of book 1, Intrusion, don't forget to enter via rafflecopter below!
Forbidden
Charlotte Stein
(Under the Skin #2)
Published: January 27, 2015 by Avon Impulse
Published: January 27, 2015 by Avon Impulse
They say I need help. Another exorcism. This is not new. This is my life. Today, I expect to suffer at the hands of a man as warped by superstition and fear as my mother. A man who will torture me in order to save me from things that don't exist.
But the man who actually comes to me is different.
Killian is good and decent, and he sees what's good and decent in me. And I don't mean for it to happen, but every time he looks at me, his gaze sets me on fire. He brings me to the light, gives me back my life. For the first time, I see a future for myself.
A future with him.
I burn for Killian-a man who's intent on protecting me. On healing me.
He doesn't get it. The only thing that can heal me is him. But Killian will soon be a priest. Untouchable. Forbidden.
Chapter One:
I don’t know how long I’ve been
up here this time. Feels like days, but it can’t possibly be. If it was
days I would have peed myself. I would have made a mess or else starved
to death, yet somehow I don’t even feel hungry. Though really is that
any kind of surprise? My stomach is churning and churning at the thought
of what might happen soon. Every time it comes into my head all of this
sickness rises inside me, and only the idea of having to lie here with
puke stinking me up puts a stop to it.
The room is rancid enough
as it is. Momma shut the windows ages ago, and the heat is making me
sweat. I can see it shining on my bare arms and taste it salt-sharp on
my upper lip, and whenever I wriggle I get a wave of that familiar
smell. The one I never used to get when I was young and innocent, but
now get all the time.
I scrub and scrub and plaster my body in
deodorant, but it doesn’t seem to matter. The ripe scent of my own body
is still there, like a reminder of what makes Momma hate me now.
Not
that I need any kind of reminder, what with the ropes around my wrists
and ankles and the fact that I’ve been here forever. Or the way she
looks at me when she comes in to see if I’m contrite and ready to plead
for forgiveness. Of course I always tell her I am, but whether I do or
not don’t matter.
How can you really get absolution for being
possessed by the devil? I could say ten thousand Hail Marys and recite
the Bible backward, and it wouldn’t make no difference. The demon she
sees in me is invisible, and never seems to do nothing, so it’s not like
I can just scrub him out or act like he’s not there. I can’t stop
spinning the room around like in that movie with the girl who has no
eyebrows.
The room has never spun around.
You ask me—if I am
possessed, I got some raw kind of deal. Seems unfair to have to lie
here and be so severely punished, when I don’t even get special powers.
As far as I know I haven’t so much as spoken in tongues or bent over in
some kind of weird way, and for darn sure my eyes have never turned
black.
So why do I have to suffer?
She says it’s because I
sinned, but I swear to God I haven’t said or done a single damned thing.
Apart from right then, thinking damned. But I know the devil doesn’t
jump into you for saying that. Most people don’t even think of it as a
curse anymore. The girls I used to go to school with said all kinds of
things, like the one with the F and the one with S and even worse—that
one I’m not even going to give a letter to.
But none of them ever had the devil eat her soul alive.
And
none of them had to wait all tied up in her bedroom, while some awful
Priest comes to exorcise the evil spirits out of them.
I can hear
him now, climbing up the stairs. He sounds like judgment day coming to
greet me, footsteps as heavy as the hooves of the devil I’m supposed to
be possessed by. Each one slower than the last, until I have to hold my
breath or else pass out from the tension. Why isn’t he racing up here?
How come he’s dragging his feet like this?
Because he wants to
torment me before this has even begun, I think, and then all this water
starts leaking out of my eyes. I pull at the ropes and wish for hands as
small as mice just so I could get free. Though if I’m going to be
wishing I’ll try for wings, because Lord I want to fly away from here.
If
I weren’t tied I’d jump right out the window, wings or not. I’d suffer
two broken legs and a snapped neck, if it meant I didn’t have to face
whatever awful thing he’s going to do to me. Beat me, most likely,
because Momma would never get anyone who wasn’t going to beat me. He’s
going to stripe me from here to tomorrow—which I could take.
It’s the other stuff that worries me more.
The
boiling holy water and the drowning and the branding with crosses. She
says he’ll do that, all of that, and I believe her so completely I make
myself bleed. My wrists are bleeding and my ankles are bleeding and I’m
crying when the doorknob starts to turn. I scream for someone to deliver
me from this hell, and just as I do the door swings wide.
He comes in, and after that I don’t know what to think.
I
go silent straight away, but not because I’m choked with fear. I would
be if he was the image in my head—seven feet tall and old as sin, with
eyes like winter at the ends of the earth. Then I’d be scared and
screaming still. But he’s not that way at all.
He looks like some ordinary man.
He
ain’t even wearing the robes and the collar and that. He has on this
old beaten leather jacket—one that is far too hot for the weather here,
if his flushed face is anything to go by—and even more astonishing a
pair of jeans. I swear to God he’s wearing jeans like he just did some
fancy thing that jeans-wearing people do.
And he is young.
He’s
so young I don’t even realize what’s going on at first. I’m too busy
gawking at his black, black hair and his lack of an angry beard and his
kind of smooth everything. He steps forward and I marvel at how vigorous
he is—not heavy and lumbering at all. And when he reaches for the rope
around my right wrist, all I can do is look and look at his nice hands.
They’re
big, but they’re not the least bit wrinkled or riddled with veins. He
could be just a few years older than me—maybe twenty-five? He could be
younger, even though that seems crazy. Momma would never bring someone
like this to deal with me. She would laugh at someone like this. She
took us away from the church because the new Priest was all young and
into love and forgiving, so this makes no sense.
And then I realize what he’s doing, and it makes even less sense than that.
He’s
untying me. He’s doing it fast too—like he knows Momma might come in
any second and stop him. Only I can see Momma in the door with her face
all pinched and her hands wringing and wringing and she doesn’t take a
single step toward him, so maybe his quickness is something else.
It seems like he’s horrified about something.
I
think the horrified something might be me. He mutters a word as he sets
me loose, and I’m pretty sure the word is barbaric. But him believing
that and not wanting to thrash the devil out of me is so not what I’ve
been thinking all this time that it kind of won’t sink in. I keep trying
to look around him to Momma, waiting for her to step in.
Or for
him to change his mind. Maybe this is all just a trick or a trap, and
suddenly he’ll get out a switch to line my skin. Could be he has
something worse on him—like a thick leather belt or some kind of
whupping device—and I can feel my body bracing for it. Hurt like a son
of a b-i-t-c-h when Momma went at me with that rolling pin one time, so
Lord only knows what will happen with this man wielding something
bigger.
He comes closer and I wince away from it.
Only I’m
wincing away from nothing at all. He doesn’t lash me or strike my face.
He gets his hand underneath my bare bruised legs and the other around my
back and then he says, “Put your arms around my neck.”
Takes me a
while to understand what he means, though. I sit there thinking—this
must be some other new kind of punishment, and the minute I do as he
asks, pain will make me pass out. He might have shockers behind his ears
or something like it, and even after I find out he doesn’t I’m
wondering.
I wonder right up until he lifts me into his arms.
After
which my thoughts go kind of still and stunned. No one has ever lifted
me up before. Could be my dad did once, but I can barely remember him.
And Momma sure never—she would have hated touching me this much. She
would have complained about me making her hands all dirty, yet somehow
the Priest don’t seem to care.
He holds me all firm against his
good clean clothes—that leather smells like old books and the shirt
underneath just the same. And when Momma moans and asks what he’s doing
in a weak sort of voice, he answers like it’s only sensible.
“I’m
taking your daughter to the hospital,” he says, even though it must be
miles to Sacred Heart and I will have to go all the way in his car in my
worn thin housedress and my stink of a too-hot room and my red hair so
lank it looks black.
People will laugh at him, I reckon.
Yet he doesn’t seem to care at all.
He
doesn’t even care when Momma goes to bar his way. He tells her,“Step
aside, Mrs. Emerson,”and for a second I go hot and cold thinking of
someone disobeying her and provoking her wrath. Then I remember: he
isn’t just someone. He’s a man of God and he has all the things she
believes in on his side, and no amount of hand-wringing can change that.
She
has to do as he says, and she does. She lets him go on through and down
the stairs with me in his arms, though it’s only once we’re outside
that I really feel what’s happened. The breezy autumn air hits my
fevered skin and I breathe out for the first time in years.
The
breathing out sounds kind of like a sob. It comes out loud at any
rate—so loud I know he must hear it for what it is. But if he does, he
gives no sign. He just keeps on walking to his car, while I look back
over at the clapboard place I lived in all these years. Somehow I
understand that I’m not ever coming back to it.
This is it now,
this is my freedom, and it looks like a Priest in his old sedan, with my
momma running out in her black skirts calling to me. “Dorothy,” she
screams, “Dorothy,” and in my head I’m already turning into someone
else. They will ask at the hospital and I will say.
My name is Dot.
Other Books in the Series:
Intrusion
(Under the Skin #1)
Intrusion
(Under the Skin #1)
“By seizing on the power of erotic language and allowing it to range from rhapsodic to raunchy, Stein has written a radiant ode to the mind-the biggest erogenous zone of all.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review) for INTRUSION
“Fans...will be mesmerized by Noah’s amazing intellect, social awkwardness, vicious inner strength, and palpable vulnerability. Readers will find themselves inwardly cheering for Beth—both a survivor and a worthy heroine. Although the relationship between these characters is a slow-build, their dynamic both in and out of bed is very raw and intense, creating strong sexual and emotional tension.”
Charlotte Stein is the acclaimed author of over thirty short stories, novellas and novels, including the recently DABWAHA nominated Run To You.
When not writing deeply emotional and intensely sexy books, she can be found eating jelly turtles, watching terrible sitcoms and occasionally lusting after hunks.
Author Links:
(Note: I received this promo+giveaway info from Book Plug Promotions. ~Punya)
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