Eros the Trickster – A Guest Blog by Monique Roffey (@MoniqueRoffey13)

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Erotic love is the trickster love, isn’t it? Eros, the bastard, is a cherub and pest a manipulator. He draws back his bow, lets his arrow fly and then, bam. If he chooses you, you’re stuffed. It’s one thing if you’ve been struck by Eros and so has your love interest. Then you both go down; but get to walk away, hand in hand into a brave new day. If erotic love is mutual between two people, then, happy days. Often people get married on the strength of this mutual sexual love interest. But what if Eros strikes only you, or, only you first? Then, it’s an agony to be the one who has been struck. A complex has been triggered, the anima or the animus, and therein follows much pain, heartache and sometimes even humiliation. We suffer.

“Eros is stronger than the go,” my shrink once said to me. Yes, this kind of love is strong and we can topple over, or be dragged over, and sometimes swiftly. One minute we are rational-minded, thoughtful and grounded, the next we are ‘stupidy’ (as we say in Trinidad), and have taken leave of our senses. It’s a kind of moral death, too, or brain malfunction. We have been struck. We do things that are unethical (shag another’s husband or partner, for example). It’s a condition, a kind of brain fever. I’ve seen the best of us go under. Sometimes we suffer for months, even longer. An unrequited erotic attraction to another person – that’s a hard one. Yuk. Also, it’s hard to walk way from, too. And hard to set yourself straight; hard to keep the whole thing in its proper perspective, because Eros is a powerful player in the forces of the sexual love game. He tricks us, and we capitulate. Over we go. Eros sets the proverbial cat amongst the pigeons. Eros is a chaos element, the Fool in the Tarot, not the Lovers card; he is the Magician, too. Eros sets us on our travels; Eros is a cosmic bum, a Fool, and a fooler too.

In my sexy new novel The Tryst, Eros arrives in female form, in the small red haired beauteous character of Lilah. Lilah the domme, the imp, the pest, the player, the predator. An innocent couple Bill and Jane invite her into their home and she wreaks havoc on them and delights in it. She mashes them up, changes things between them, forever. That is her habit and her great kink, to fuck Innocents like Jane and Bill. Hit and run, leaving them wanting more. She is the great seducer, a Lilatha, a game changer. She’s done it many times, taken herself out on a night hunt, drained the man of his power, left him sleeping, and climbed out the window. This time, she is caught, though. This time she too is struck by another pesky imp, Eros. Bam. Over she goes.

*****

The Tryst, (Dodo Ink)

Extract

By Monique Roffey

LILAH

I scared Miss Sexual Desert good and proper, but found myself quite shaken too. In the cab on the way back I touched my cheek where she’d slapped me twice. The sting was still there, surprising. Heat in her after all, the little prig. I don’t think she believed what I said about me and Bill; I could hardly believe what I’d said myself, that I was journeying back to Bill, paying a cab to take me to him. Something has happened between me and Bill. What had been happening to me? Being outdoors in the fresh air had given me a taste of reality again. Whatever had been going on in that creepy house between us had to stop. It was only twenty-four hours since I’d met this dreary couple in a bar, a pair like so many others – Jane and Bill, Janet and Joe, Mary and Pete, just like many I’d encountered. Same deal.

And yet this time it had been different. I hadn’t escaped so easily. I’d prevaricated because of this new feeling. I hastily took stock. I had stayed on a hunt long after the kill. I had met a lover in the form of a man in the human realm. A First. Bill could meet me, match my skills. Bill had located my spot, caused me to gush like no other, not even Samael. And – was there more? There had been another aspect which I found hard to name, a feeling which had swiftly passed over me during our hours of sexing. It had been a flash of a rich, full feeling. I had felt an empathy with Bill, like he was more than just a mortal man. Bill had stirred me up and I wasn’t accustomed to this chaotic mixture of feelings inside.

Whatever these new ‘feelings’ were or had been, they had disappeared. Vamoosed. I couldn’t remember them. Love? Ha. I felt like my old self again. I felt itchy. Loose. I wanted to be on my way, back into the forest. I remembered the cat, Choo Choo. I thought of the hexacious tower I’d created, amidst all that iron. I had stamped my mark on this couple, I always do. I had reconfigured things between them, and that was what the wife had wanted me to do. Too bad if she had changed her mind. Too bad. And Bill, well, he had given me a turn. I had taken my life in my hands to have intercourse with him. He was one to remember. Okay, I said to myself: there’s nothing like experience. This man Bill has been a first. I will go and say goodbye to him.

Bill greeted me at the door with decisive amorous kisses. I’d only been gone a couple of hours, but already he wanted more of my talents; he was tugging at my clothes, trying to remove my skirt. I pushed him off. That constant shocked expression had disappeared. He looked different. Pinker in the cheeks. He wanted more of me and I’d had enough of him.

“Thank God you’re back. I fell asleep, didn’t find your note at first. I . . . panicked.”

“I went to see your wife.”

“What?”

“Yeah. I wish I hadn’t.”

“I wish you hadn’t either. What did she say?”

“What do you think she said? The usual jealous wife stuff. Do you care?” A strange look came into his eyes. Soft. Thoughtful.

“I don’t want you to disappear like that again.” I stared at him. “What are you saying?” Bill wanted to keep me there. He’d struck gold and fuck, shit, damn and hell – yes, he was expecting I might even like to stay with him!

“Me? Stay here with you in this creepy old house, with all these red and yellow walls – me? You freakin kidding me?”

“We can paint them white – or black – or whatever you want. Just stay, another night, at least. Stay a week. A month. However long you like. I was . . . worried.”

“Why should I stay?”

“For the same reason other imps like you have stayed with men. To be happy. Wouldn’t you like it here? What’s your home like? A hut? A bender made of twigs? An earth-floored cave in the woods? Do you live underground? Eh? What? Surely this must have some appeal?”

“Get lost,” I snarled.

“Always so mean, eh? Is that it? I’m to be chewed up and spat out, is that right?”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“And where’s my cat, eh? Choo Choo. Where is he? Scared him off too?”

“Oh, fuck your cat.”

“Have you fucked my cat?” He said this with a knowing smirk.

I threw myself at Bill, tore at him and wreaked my vengeance and distaste on him and their Goddamn marriage. I turned nasty on him, biting him and this time when we were fucking we were like cats fighting. Furniture tumbled around us. Again, I was matched.

Bill pinned me down and then he fucked me senseless and dear-God-in-heaven more than anything – this was not okay. This was why I fled in the first place, to be so taken like this by the very first man ever made. Rape. It was all women were to expect. And so my foremother Lilith ran and ran away from man and God, only to be further humiliated in the desert. She was so angry then, she made daemons, thousands of them every day, her offspring. She became an outcast, forever. I spat at Bill and fought, but he held me down and then he fucked me hard and rough and a pearly liquid gushed from between my legs, a silken waterfall slipping out. My whole body spasmed in the fullness of my orgasm. He could make me come just like that. It was as if he’d learnt the knack. And all the while I thought: I am lost, lost. Go home, get out of here. I was embarrassed, torn open. I hated him then. I didn’t want to look Bill in the eye. He thought he now had some power over me because he could make me gush. When he was done he withdrew, his own body shuddering, his semen still dripping. His cock hadn’t shrivelled with the release, it still looked plump and even ready for more. Bill glowed, exulted with his conquest. I’m sure he thought he’d turned a trick himself. He kissed my stomach. But I was cold to him, cold in my heart.

*****

The Tryst, blurb

By Monique Roffey

London, midsummer night. Jane and Bill meet the mysterious Lilah in a bar. She entrances the couple with half-true, mixed up tales about her life. At closing time, Jane makes an impulsive decision to invite Lilah back to their home. But Jane has made a catastrophic error of judgment, for Lilah is a skilled and ruthless predator, the likes of which few encounter in a lifetime. Isolated and cursed, Jane and Bill are forced to fight for each other, and, in doing so, discover their covert desires.

Part psychological thriller, part contemporary magical realism, The Tryst revisits the tale of Adam’s first wife, Lilith, to examine the secrets of an everyday marriage.

*****

Praise for The Tryst

“What makes The Tryst an unexploded virus isn’t just the quality and brightness of Roffey’s writing on sex, even as it uncovers inner glades between flesh and fantasy where sex resides – but the taunting clarity of why those glades stay covered. A throbbing homewrecker of a tale, too late to call Fifty Shades of Red.”

DBC Pierre, Booker Prize winner

*****

BIOG

Monique Roffey is an award-winning Trinidadian-born writer. Her novels have been translated into five languages and short-listed for major awards including
the Orange Prize, Costa Fiction Award, Encore Award, Orion Award and the OCM Bocas Award for Caribbean Literature. In 2013, Archipelago won the OCM BOCAS Award for Caribbean Literature. Her memoir, With the Kisses of his Mouth, was published in 2011. She is a Lecturer on the MFA in the Novel at Manchester Metropolitan University. She divides her time between the East end of London and Port of Spain, Trinidad.

Buy at Amazon:

UK: http://amzn.to/2snABX2 US: https://www.amazon.com/Tryst-Monique-Roffey-ebook/dp/B072BX51PV/

Book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=esSTfsbP3P4&sns=em

Twitter: @MoniqueRoffey13

Facebook: @MoniqueRoffeyAuthor

Instagram: @MoniqueRoffey

Website: www.moniqueroffey.com

J J Montgomery is at Mine Today on her Gun For Hire Blog Tour

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Gun For Hire

The Maui Heat Series

by J.J. Montgomery

 

J.J. will be awarding 5 ebook of Gun For Hire to randomly drawn winners via rafflecopter during the tour. Please use the RaffleCopter below to enter. Remember you may increase your chances of winning by visiting the other tour stops. You may find those locations here.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gun for Hire Blurb:

 

The job should have been easy—patrol a swank beach that serves as a backyard for Maui’s rich, kick out the riffraff, and get a tan in the process. But rent-a-cop Samantha Winters didn’t anticipate a deliciously grumpy cop, Sergeant Grady Roark, who comes down to the beach to bust her chops and instead leaves her breathless…and wondering why the one man who could help her seems determined to thwart her at every turn.

 

Grady is keeping secrets from Sam that have him walking the line between attraction and duty. But when Sam becomes the target of a shadowy organization, Grady will have to choose between the law and the temptation of a woman who has him breaking every rule he’s ever known.

 

The job should have been easy, but when the bullets start flying, Sam learns nothing is as easy as it seems when you’re a Gun for Hire.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Buy Links:

Amazon | The Wild Rose Press

 

 

 

Gun for Hire Excerpt:

 

“Why John Deacon, Sam?” Grady’s hands tightened on the steering wheel.

I threw my hands up. “It could be Jesus Christ himself signing my paycheck and I’d still be doing it for the same reasons! The job works for my family. What is your problem with John Deacon? And don’t tell me nothing—you owe me more than that.”

“Maybe I’m just jealous.” Grady stared ahead. “Like you said.”

My stomach did a loop. “Don’t use your charm on me, I’m immune—”

“You think I’m charming?”

“Hell no, I don’t! And particularly not when you’re avoiding my question.”

“But you said I had charm.” He tilted his head and gave me a long, sly look from the corner of his eyes. His teeth flashed white from that tanned face and I nearly had to fan myself when I realized I loved the feeling of Grady teasing me.

I threw my hands up in the air. “I give up!”

He wanted to talk about confusing? All I knew about Grady prior to this day was that he was six-foot-two of gorgeous and about as warm as a polar bear on the North Pole in January. And now—

 

 

 

 

About J. J. Montgomery:

 

J.J. MONTGOMERY writes romantic suspense novels with a sense of humor. Her heroines are as smart as they are
smart mouthed and the men in their lives are just trying to keep up. Gun for Hire is the first book in J.J.’s Maui Heat Series.

If you’d like to know more, including info on her newest book, where she gets her ideas, and how it’s possible she can’t use Facebook, please visit her:

 

 

 

 

Find J.J. Here:

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

Solstice Heat

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Happy Solstice, my Lovelies! Here in England it’s a hot one. With no AC in the house and this kind of heat so unusual
here, we tend to get up close and personal with our Heat Waves and everyone finds relief in different ways. Personally I prefer a cold drink in the shade, when there’s shade to be had. Somehow being out in it makes me feel like a willing participant rather than a wilted victim.

 

 

And really, why not celebrate? This is the fecund time of year. Seeds become plants that bud and make fruit, and lordy, lordy, don’t we eat like kings on that delicious succulent summer fruit? Plants grow like mad. I swear I can almost see my sweet corn growing. I half expect to hear it whisper urgently, ‘feed me, KD’ as the neighbors and their dogs slowly begin to disappear. The old saying ‘Knee high by the 4th of July?’ Well mine is already that and more! Anticipation! An-ti-ci-pa-a-a-tion!

 

 

 

 

Lots of things grow and come to fruition in the heat. I suppose as a writer I love the idea of the whole growth cycle – a seed is planted, it sprouts, then grows into a plant, which sets blossoms, then produces fruit. For those of us who write, that fruit is often the source of new seed as well.

 

 

 

 

Being caught up in the world of Medusa’s Consortium with Blind-Sided and Buried Pleasures at the moment, the excitement of ripe fruit is more than just me checking out my crops in the veg patch every day and eating enough British strawberries to sink a battleship. But this time of year always reminds me that I live and move and grow and change within the cycle. The heat, that intense push to growth and maturity is a part of all our lives, and I do wonder at times if we are actually the metaphor for the wonderful turning of the year, for the ebb and flow that grounds us, even when it roasts us.

 

 

 

 

British Summer is notoriously fickle. Everyone who lives here will tell you that. But it’s also in-your-face brilliant, filled with birdsong, long hours of daylight, and more shades of green than the eye can take in. And if you don’t take full advantage, it’ll turn it’s back and howl in a storm. Mind you it will anyway, but that’s just a part of the adventure. “It was a dark and stormy night” is just the flip side of the “summer lovin’” coin. I get a good bit of both writing paranormal, and I appreciate both, even as I grumble about them.

 

Happy Solstice everyone! Smell the roses, dance in the water sprinkler, have a cold drink and read a good book in the shade. Can’t you just feel the growth?

 

Don’t forget Landscapes, my Medusa’s Consortium M/M novella, is a FREE Download!download at the moment. Landscaper, Reese Chambers, is just the kind of bloke who would appreciate the fecund British Summer. So be sure to download if you haven’t already. Then grab a cold drink, a spot of shade and enjoy the heat.

 

 

 

 

Landscapes Blurb:

Alonso Darlington has a disturbing method of keeping landscaper, Reese Chambers, both safe from and oblivious to his dangerous lust for the man. But Reese isn’t easy to keep secrets from, and Alonso wants way more than to admire the man from afar. Can he risk a real relationship without risking Reese’s life?

Note: Landscapes has been previously released as part of the Brit Boys: On Boys boxed set.

 

Landscapes Excerpt:

The moonlight was bright and Reese’s night vision was good, but the path was rocky and steep. He stumbled and went down on his arse, catching himself on one elbow and cursing as the sensation of pins and needles shot up his arm. He forced his way to his feet slipping and sliding the last hundred meters on the dew-drenched stones. He was just about to call out, just about to shout Alonso’s name when the man moaned softly and Reese stopped in his tracks. Not only was Alonso no longer curled on his side, but the man was naked. He lay flat on his back, his knees bent, bare feet resting on the bench, one arm flung over his face, the other curved down low across his belly, his fisted hand moving up and down the length of his cock.

Reese froze, unable to move, unable to breathe. Alonso Darlington was beautiful, like no one he’d ever seen. His body was sculpted, not like polished marble, but with the ruggedness of the rocks of the fells, like he labored to be free from himself, like one of Michelangelo’s prisoners. The muscles of his belly tensed and relaxed and convulsed and relaxed again in response to his stroking. The movement of muscle beneath skin on his biceps and his forearms, on the rise and fall of his chest, on the tensing of the chorded muscles in his neck and throat as he swallowed was like a hypnotic dance. The muscles in his thighs twitched and bulged as he rocked and arched upward until Reese could see the clenched half-domes of his buttocks. He could smell the nutmeg and yeast scent of his heat, charged through with the crackle of ozone. He stood frozen on the spot, his own cock responding to the sensory overload, even as his brain demanded he give the man his privacy, demanded with a sense of half-frightened urgency that he leave as quietly as he could, but it was too late.

Alonso’s arm fell away from his face and Reese could feel the nearly physical press of his gaze.

I’m sorry,’ he managed around a tongue that felt too big for his mouth. ‘I saw you, and I thought that … I’ll go now,’ but even as he said it, Reese stepped forward, feeling reeled into the man like a fish on a line. Alonso eased himself up on one elbow, not taking his hand off his cock, not taking his eyes off Reese. ‘I should leave,’ Reese croaked, but instead he stepped nearer.

In a move that was not quite human in its grace, Alonso sat up and nodded to the bench next to him.

Cautiously Reese sat down struggling to keep his eyes off the man’s cock. He could still feel Alonso’s gaze on him as though he were the one who was naked. ‘I thought … When I saw you out here, lying on the bench at this hour … I was worried.’

 

‘That’s very kind of you, Reese, but there’s nothing wrong with me. My … afflictions, don’t trouble me much. I’m not ill. In truth, I’m the epitome of health. I’m just … different.’

‘I’m sorry. Of course you would be out after dark. I didn’t mean to offend you. I’ll go now.’ But before he could stand, Alonso’s hand shot behind his head with lightning speed, fingers curling in Reese’s sleep-mussed hair, and in that instant of reaction, the second Reese gasped for his breath, the man’s mouth was on his, warm and hard and terrifying in its command, a command Reese could do little but respond to. Even as fear battled lust low in his belly, he parted his lips, opened his mouth, welcomed the search and conquest of Alonso’s tongue, his own the white flag that instinctively yielded all else beyond the breach, all territories beyond the invasion.

 

 

Doctor’s Orders by Lucy Felthouse Now Available in Audiobook Format! #audiobook #audible #gay #romance #kink

Guest Blogger, New Releases, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Lucy Felthouse’s M/M erotic romance novella, Doctor’s Orders, is now available in audiobook format. Narrated by voice artist Peter Revel-Walsh, you can now listen to this kinky BDSM tale on the go!

Doctor’s Orders Blurb:

Hospital porter Aaron Miller isn’t expecting a very exciting birthday. He and his doctor boyfriend, Blake Colville, are working opposite shifts, leaving Aaron to go home to an empty house and the prospect of another shift the following day. Just as he’s leaving work, however, an unexpected sexy encounter in a supply cupboard leaves him feeling in a much more celebratory mood. And an impending dirty weekend away with Blake just puts the icing on the non-existent cake. But who needs cake when you’re dating a dominant doctor?

Audio links:

Amazon UK: http://amzn.to/2qrwuEu
Amazon US: http://amzn.to/2r5Tmxf
Audible UK: http://adbl.co/2qC8gYf
Audible US: http://adbl.co/2qx230E
iTunes UK: http://apple.co/2r7iZO5
iTunes US: http://apple.co/2qvQxGW

eBook available here: http://lucyfelthouse.co.uk/published-works/doctors-orders/

*****

Author Bio:

Lucy Felthouse is the award-winning author of erotic romance novels Stately Pleasures (named in the top 5 of Cliterati.co.uk’s 100 Modern Erotic Classics That You’ve Never Heard Of, and an Amazon bestseller), Eyes Wide Open (winner of the Love Romances Café’s Best Ménage Book 2015 award, and an Amazon bestseller) and The Persecution of the Wolves. Including novels, short stories and novellas, she has over 160 publications to her name. She owns Erotica For All, and is one eighth of The Brit Babes. Find out more about her writing at http://lucyfelthouse.co.uk, or on Twitter or Facebook. Sign up for automatic updates on Amazon or BookBub. Subscribe to her newsletter and get a free eBook: http://www.subscribepage.com/lfnewsletter

Release blitz hosted by Writer Marketing Services.

Landscapes: FREE M/M Download in Anticipation of More Medusa!

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FREE Download!

I’m elated to offer Landscape as a little pressie to all my lovely readers because this is one of my very favourite novellas with two of the most complex, most intriguing characters that I’ve ever written, if I do say so myself, and two that just keep right on surprising me.

As you know, I’ll be releasing Blind-Sided, book two of the Medusa’s Consortium Series this summer, with book three, Buried Pleasures, hot on its tail. That being the case, I’m starting the celebration early by offering a FREE download of one of the prequel novellas to the Consortium series, Landscapes! I originally wrote this novella for a wonderful anthology of sexy M/M stories called Brit Boys: On Boys boxed set. It was my first ever M/M and my first ever vampire story.

 

To say I fell in love with Alonso and Reese would be an understatement. I hope their story doesn’t cause a meltdown on your device because they’re players in a much, much larger story you won’t want to miss out on. I didn’t know this until I started writing In The Flesh, book one of the Medusa novels, only to discover Alonso and Reese right there in the thick of it. (if you’ve not read In The Flesh, be sure to before Blind-Sided comes out. I wouldn’t want you to miss any of the fun.) Needless to say, that hasn’t changed. Because Alonso and Reese are right in the middle of all the trouble in Blind-Sided as well. So I thought an introduction to these two sexy men was a great way to introduce all of you to a couple of guys who are so amazing that Medusa herself wants them on her team.

 

 

Here’s the blurb for Landscapes:

 

Alonso Darlington has a disturbing method of keeping landscaper, Reese Chambers, both safe from and oblivious to his dangerous lust for the man. But Reese isn’t easy to keep secrets from, and Alonso wants way more than to admire the man from afar. Can he risk a real relationship without risking Reese’s life?

Note: Landscapes has been previously released as part of the Brit Boys: On Boys boxed set.

 

More About Medusa’s Consortium Series:

 

Contrary to popular belief, Medusa is alive and well. Ever since she escaped Greece and the Olympians, Medusa/AKA
Magda Gardener has been secretly kicking ass and taking names.

 

Scheming to keep one step ahead of the Olympians and the havoc they wreak, Magda is a rescuer of monsters and demons and a thief of all things sacred to the gods who betrayed her. She is irreverent, powerful, rich and has her own agenda in which the lines between right and wrong are not always clearly drawn. For those she helps, those she draws to herself, life will never be the same. Like the Godfather, those who owe Magda Gardener never know when she’ll call in the debt, nor what will be required of them when she does. But the price for those who cross her, for those who hurt the ones under her protection, is worse than death.

 

As her Consortium of powerful misfits grows into a cohesive family, as plotting from Olympus threatens the modern world, it Magda finds it more and more difficult to keep herself apart from the lives of those she has drawn to her. Perhaps the Gorgon doesn’t have a heart of stone after all.

Here are Blurbs for the first three books of Medusa’s Consortium:

 

Book I – In The Flesh Blurb:

When Susan Innes comes to visit her friend, Annie Rivers, in Chapel House, the deconsecrated church that Annie is renovating into a home, she discovers her outgoing friend changed, reclusive, secretive, and completely enthralled by a mysterious lover, whose presence is always felt, but never seen, a lover whom she claims is god. As her holiday turns into a nightmare, Susan must come to grips with the fact that her friend’s lover is neither imaginary nor is he human, and even worse, he’s turned his wandering eye on Susan, and he won’t be denied his prize. If Susan is to fight an inhuman stalker intent on having her as his own, she’ll need a little inhuman help.

 


Book II – Blind-Sided Blurb:

In New York City away from those she loves, living with the enigmatic vampire, Desiree Fielding, Susan Innes struggles to come to terms with life as a vampire whose body serves as the prison for a powerful demon. When Reese Chambers arrives unexpectedly from England, desperate for her help, she discovers that Alonso Darlington, his lover and her maker, has been taken captive and Reese has been warned to tell no one but her. Before the two can make a plan, Susan receives her own message from a man calling himself just Cyrus. He not only holds her maker prisoner, but also her lover, the angel Michael, and if she wishes to see either of them alive, she’ll come to him and not tell Magda Gardener, the woman they all work for and fear. With no help coming from Magda or her Consortium, Susan and Reese must turn to the Guardian – the terrifying demon now imprisoned in her body. He alone can help them, but how can she possibly trust Him after all he’s done?

 

Book III – Buried Pleasures Blurb:

The neon and glitz of Las Vegas is no vacation for SAMANTHA BLACK. All SAM wants is to get her friend, EVIE HOLT, away from ruthless magician, DARIAN FOX, who wants Sam to perform at his club, Illusions. A neon circus tent of strange and mystical acts, Illusions is one of the biggest draws in Vegas, and he’s hell-bent on including Sam in the program, holding Evie in his seductive thrall in an attempt to make that happen. But Fox isn’t the only one who wants Sam. The reclusive MR GRAVES, owner of Buried Pleasures, the most exclusive, and most mysterious casino in Sin City wants Sam. Behind every powerful man, there’s a woman, and MAGDA GARDENER is the shadowy woman behind Graves. Magda has her own reason for wanting Sam. Everyone wants Samantha Black because Samantha Black’s got talent! Besides the seductive musical genius she was born with, Samantha Black can literally kill with her song.

 

As the threat Sam lives under becomes darker and more violent, her only ally seems to be JON, the enigmatic homeless

man who lives in the storm tunnels beneath Vegas with his ginormous dog, GUS. When Jon gives Sam a poker chip from Buried Pleasures worth a fortune, and Magda Gardener is willing to do almost anything to keep her from cashing it in, Sam’s world turns upside down as she discovers what the chilling power of her voice really means. With Jon’s help, she learns to walk the line between life and death and comes to realize that it’s only her voice and her affinity with death that can get to the bottom of the horrors surrounding the outrageous success of Darian Fox and his magic.

 

As her feelings deepen for Jon and she becomes more and more fascinated with his underground world in the storm tunnels, she soon learns Jon has his own secrets. Too late she realizes that not only is she walking the line between life and death, but she may actually be falling in love with Death himself, and the poker chip she holds on to may well be the only thing keeping her in the world of the living. Death is taking no holiday in Vega. His reasons for being there are not pleasure. As powerful as Death is, there’s someone even he fears. If Sam is to understand her heritage and win the battle against Darian Fox, the stakes will be higher than she could have ever imagines, and not only will she have to work hand in hand with Death, but they’ll both have to work for the true queen of the darkness, Medusa herself, if they are to accomplish their task.