Most of you know I’ve been on a wild roller-coaster ride finishing Fulfilling the Contract, the second novel in The Mount Trilogy, and the sequel to The Initiation of Ms Holly.  Because of Holly’s popularity and her new release with SourceBooks in February in the US (The pre-release reviews and PR have already been fabulous!) the deadline for completion of Fulfilling the Contract was moved forward, which meant I’ve been scrambling hard these past two and a half months to finish up. I’ve been scrambling hard, but having a totally wonderful time with Rita Holly’s counterparts in Mount Vegas. The wild ride with Nick Chase and Elsa Crane in the luxury hotels of Vegas has kept me writing hard and well-entertained. I’m very excited about the continuation of The Mount’s story, and in this case, what happens in Vegas definitely doesn’t stay in Vegas. It’ll be available to you in eBook soon and in print in February.

With the rush to completion, I’m still anxiously awaiting the cover art, which I promise to share as soon as I get it. In the meantime, here’s a sizzling peek of the Vegas action to get you all primed and ready for Fulfilling the Contract.

Blurb for Fulfilling the Contract:

Limo driver, NICK CHASE’s bad night gets worse when he picks up TANYA POVIC at a bar only to discover the explosive sex they share lands her in breach of her very strange contract. Blaming himself that Tanya will lose the large completion bonus earmarked for her mother’s surgery, Nick negotiates with her boss, the tough and mysterious ELSA CRANE, to allow him to fulfill Tanya’s contract and secure her bonus.

Elsa runs Mount Vegas, which offers voyeuristic pleasures for a price. Nick’s job, with Elsa and her quirky team, is to give clients something worth watching through the plate glass windows of Vegas’s luxury hotels and beyond. The learning curve is steep and kinky. As Nick and Elsa’s relationship sizzles and ignites more than hotel room rendezvouses are exposed. In this sequel to The Initiation of Ms Holly things get positively dangerous as Rita Holly and her team are called in from London to lend a helping hand. Bets are being placed. Will Nick fulfil the contract? Will he and Elsa take the gamble? And will they find a way to win at the high stakes, double or nothing, game of hearts?

Excerpt from Fulfilling the Contract:

A man who was as tall as Pagan but built much more like a dancer opened the door to the suite at the Cosmopolitan and nodded them in. He was dressed like Tarzan in a leopard print loincloth that left little of a well-worked-out physique to the imagination. His only other fashion accessory was a pair of unlaced black Converse high-tops. That it didn’t seem strange to Nick was a testament to how long he’d been working in Vegas.

The man gave Nick a curious once-over then with a jerk of his head, nodded them toward one of the bedrooms.

Sitting in the middle of the big bed was Tarzan’s Jane. Her loin cloth and halter top barley covered the goodies, and it was obvious that the goodies were exceptionally fine. Her heavy auburn hair was in the process of escaping a large tortoise shell clip, and a good bit of it hung in wild ringlets down her back and over her shoulders. Her do was all topped off by a bright blue headset that got lost in the crown of her hair and reappeared from the silky dark mass just in time to cup her ears. She wriggled bare toes at the end of well-muscled legs that went on forever before disappearing under the small laptop upon which she typed madly.

At last the woman looked up, and Nick was astounded that someone with such dark hair had such blue eyes. The smile she offered was very bright and very brief as she took in the way Tanya still held onto Nick like she was about to walk the plank.

‘Did you two have sex,’ she asked without so much as a how-do-you-do.

‘That’s none of your business,’ Nick said.

‘It is my business.’ She pulled off the earphones and shoved them and the computer to Tarzan before crawling off the bed with all the grace the leopard print would imply. It was only as Tarzan settled into her place that Nick noticed the bedroom was buried in an array monitors keyboards and other electronics he couldn’t identify. There were also two telescopes pointed out the window.

The woman came to stand in front of Tanya. ‘Did you have sex with him?’ she asked.

‘It was just once, Elsa, and we used the condom.’ Tanya’s voice was a breathless tremble. All trace of her alcohol buzz was gone.

‘Of course we used a condom. I’m not stu –’

Elsa raised her hand to stop him. ‘Mr. Chase, though your use of a condom is commendable, it doesn’t absolve Tanya of what she’s done.’

‘What she’s done? She had sex. People do that, you know?’

She ignored him and focused her attention on Tanya. ‘You’ve got a month paid on your flat, and your two month’s severance pay’ll be deposited first thing in the morning. Pagan’ll go with you to clear out your locker then he’ll drive you home, since you’ve been drinking.’

‘What?’ Nick exploded. ‘You fired her for having sex with me?’

‘No, Mr Chase. I fired her for having sex with anybody other than her approved partners.’

Before he could protest, Tanya spoke up. ‘What about my bonus. I still get my bonus, no? Is so close to the end of my contract.’

Elsa held her gaze. ‘You’re in breach of contract, Tanya, so no. You don’t get your bonus, and you knew that when you went off and broke the rules yet again.’

Tanya burst into tears. ‘But I need the bonus. I have to have, or how will I pay for my mother’s surgery and her convalescence afterward? That is whole reason why I need the bonus.’

‘You can’t be serious,’ Nick said. ‘Okay, fine. Fire her if you have to, though I think it’s pretty stupid to fire someone because they had sex on their own time. In fact I’m pretty sure if Tanya wanted to hire a lawyer, we’d find that what you’re doing’s illegal.’

For a second Nick thought Elsa would laugh at him, the way her lips curled in a smile, the way her lungs filled with air, and then she spoke once again to Tanya. ‘Want to hire a lawyer, Tanya?’

‘Well of course she’ll say she doesn’t if you intimidate her enough.’

Elsa rubbed the bridge of her nose and shook her head. ‘I’m not intimidating her, Mr Chase. No one is intimidating anyone, but she won’t hire a lawyer.’

And then Nick twigged. ‘Wait a minute, she’s a prostitute then.’

This time Elsa did laugh and Tanya wailed. ‘No, she’s not a prostitute, but she knows she’s in breach of contract as she’s known the past four times she’s had sex outside the boundaries of that contract, and I’ve let her get away with it. But not this time. Not this time.’

‘You can’t do this to me, please.’ Tanya wept openly, grabbing the woman by the hand. ‘Please Elsa, just give me one more chance.’

Elsa pulled away, somewhat more gently than Nick would have expected. ‘I’ve given you way more chances than I would have given anyone else, Tanya. Now I’m sorry, but what’s done is done.’

‘But it’s only two more months. Just two more. Please! What about my mother?’

‘You should have thought of that before you repeatedly breached your contract. There are charities, places you can go for what you need, Tanya, but I can’t help you.

‘Wait a minute.’ Once again Nick butted in where it was none of his damn business instead of saying thank you very much and scramming fast. ‘So you’re getting two month’s severance pay?’

‘And it’s a lot,’ Elsa said. ‘MV pays its employees well.’

‘Is not enough though,’ Tanya bit her lip and wiped at her nose with the back of her hand. ‘It will never be enough.’

‘And she only gets the bonus if she finishes the contracted period?’ Nick said.

Elsa nodded. ‘It’s a three year contract with a very large completion bonus.’

He took a step forward. ‘How large?’

‘$250,000,’ Tanya sobbed.

‘Jesus! A quarter of a million? That’s one helluva bonus,’ Nick said.

‘And it would have been mine in two months, just two more months.’ Tanya sobbed against his chest.

‘How can you be so heartless? And just because the woman wants to have sex? Who doesn’t?’

‘It’s a contract, Mr Chase and one that Tanya’s broken repeatedly. As for sex, it’s readily available to her. Even you she could have had if she’d only followed the rules.’

‘It’s just two months, damn it! And there are extenuating circumstances.’

‘Extenuating circumstances which Ms Povic chose to ignore each time she spread her legs for a stranger.’ Elsa raised a hand. ‘I don’t blame you. It’s not your fault. As you say, everyone wants sex. But since you don’t fully understand the circumstances, then it’s best you stay out of it.’

*****

‘Surely you can give her one more chance. I mean it’s her mother,’ Nick said. ‘And really, it was my fault. I’d had a bad day and I wasn’t on my best behaviour.’

Elsa tossed the headset back onto the dressing table and rubbed the back of her neck. ‘Mr Chase, unless you want to fulfil Tanya’s contract for her, this conversation is over. It’s been a long day, and I’ve had enough. Pagan will escort the two of you back downstairs and since Tanya no longer works for me, I don’t care if you fuck her brains out. Now if you’d –’

‘Alright,’ Nick interrupted. ‘I will.’

Suddenly all eyes were on him. ‘Tell me what to do and I’ll fulfil the contract for her.

After all, it’s my fault she’s in breach.’

Tanya gave a little yelp that sounded like a kitten in distress and Elsa laughed out loud. ‘Mr Chase, you don’t even know what Tanya’s contract involves.’

‘I assume it has something to do with what’s going on in room 2031. It’s not prostitution is it?’

‘No! No, is not prostitution,’ Tanya said, the excitement nearly vibration through her voice. ‘Is nothing like that.’

‘Well actually it’s something like that,’ Elsa corrected. ‘My people get paid for sex.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Nick said.’

She nodded him over to one of the scopes set up at the bedroom window. When he balked, she nodded again. ‘Go ahead; check out what’s going on in room 2031.’

Nick nearly knocked the scope out of focus at his first view of the naked ass of a man pistoning his cock into a woman bent over a big bed. Her head was buried between the legs of another woman, who was pinching her own nipples for all she was worth and writhing beneath the serious tongue action.

‘Then they are prostitutes.’ Nick’s voice was suddenly a whisper, as though he feared he might disturb the people he viewed through the scope.

‘No.’ Elsa leaned close to him as though she could see over his shoulder. ‘They all work for me, and they get paid a lot of money to have sex with each other while someone else watches.’

With difficulty, Nick took his eyes off what was going on in the scope. He suddenly felt dizzy. ‘Let me get this straight, these people –’ he nodded around the room ‘– All of these people and those –’ he pointed to the scope ‘—have sex with each other and people pay money to watch.’

Elsa nodded ‘A lot of money.’

‘And that’s what Tanya was doing? That’s what the contract’s about, having sex and letting people watch?’

‘That’s what the contract’s about,’ Elsa said. With a smirk, she pulled Tanya’s red panties out of Nick’s pocket where he’d forgotten he’d stuffed after he’d picked them up from the parking lot at the Mango. She handed them back to Tanya and replaced them with a black business card, briskly patting his pocket as she did so. ‘I know how much you loath your job, Mr Chase, and I can almost guarantee you’d find what Tanya does a lot more satisfying. But –’ she ran a hand down and gave his crotch a quick grope ‘– It takes some serious balls.’

He elbowed her away and shoved past Tanya and Pagan. ‘You people are all crazy if you think I would … if you think I might …’

Elsa offered him a smile that he felt, much to his discomfort, right down between his legs. Then she lifted an eyebrow and gave a shrug that made the dark gloss of her hair shimmer in the subdued lighting. ‘You asked.’

That was it. With his heart hammering and his cock shoving at his fly, he fled the suite with Tanya wailing behind him, ‘please Nick! Please don’t let her do this to me. Please Nick!’

 *****

Blurb for To Rome with Lust:

(Book 3 of The Mount Trilogy coming December 2014)

The adventure that began with Rita Holly in London, then moved to Las Vegas with Nick Chase continues in Rome when a chance encounter among the Roman ruins has tourist, Liza Calendar, and perfumer, Paulo ‘The Nose’ Delacour, in sexy olfactory heaven. Paulo is the heir apparent to Martelli Fragrance, a roll Rita Holly abdicated to lead the Mount in London. With her magnificently sensitive nose leading the way, Liza uncovers Martelli’s hidden secret –it’s the front for the original Mount, an international secret society with sexual rites into which Paulo is more than willing to initiate her.

But sexual exploration takes a turn for the unpleasant when someone steals perfume formulas and lays the blame at Liza’s feet.  Together she and Paulo must sniff out the culprit and prove Liza’s innocence before more is exposed – and lost — than just secret formulas.