Every Witch Way But Wicked – The Kiss

Bestselling Kindle authors, a Foreword from Amanda Hocking (who also created the cover), and a great charity!

All proceeds from EVERY WITCH WAY BUT WICKED go to Kids Need to Read, Nathan Fillion’s charity that promotes literacy and ignites imagination, a national nonprofit foundation that promotes childhood literacy and addresses the crisis in library funding that currently exists in the United States. Donating inspiring, new books to schools, public libraries, juvenile offender facilities, dropout recovery programs, urban afterschool organizations, and special education classes, the foundation works to develop a lifelong love of reading and an awareness of social responsibility in all children.

Priced at only 99 cents, EVERY WITCH WAY BUT WICKED is on three Kindle bestseller lists. My story, The Kiss, includes secondary characters from GALAXY GIRLS (who are still secondary in this story). In this modern-day version of Sleeping Beauty, a woman whose ancestor was accused of being a witch in Salem is the only hope of a dying man with unusual powers.

I love excerpts, so I’m sharing one from The Kiss. Enjoy!

Money was a wonderful thing. Rutledge passed another bill to the bouncer, who stepped away from the door before Emma maimed him—or just walked through him. The way she felt right now, she could mow him down. Grand-mere said the women in their family were like bees. They could make the best honey around, but if necessary, they used their stingers.

The door clanged shut behind Emma as she hurried into a small courtyard, empty except for the man sitting on an iron chair that didn’t look like lawn furniture. It looked like a throne.

She stopped four feet from him, fighting the tug that swept out from him. Hell, not a tug. It was as if a thick rope was tied around her waist and twelve strong men were dragging her to him.

Come to me. Come.

She planted her feet on the terracotta tiled surface that covered three-fourths of the enclosed area behind the bar. A line of thin evergreen-type trees made it into a private terrace. Lights by the back door dimly reached this far, but the full moon spotlighted his face, giving it a silvery glow of a statue.

The most wonderful statue she’d seen.

She put a hand over her mouth to keep from crying out at the beauty. His features were chiseled, his lips full and soft. His dark eyes an impossible shade of obsidian. Black with purple highlights.

In them, she saw need. A need that only she could meet.

And she saw something else.

Suffering.

Sickness.

She didn’t know if he was an alien, but she knew he wasn’t normal.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

He grabbed the throw covering his legs and tossed it to the tiles. Intent on his face, it was the first she’d noticed the throw. He stood slowly, the strain tightening the muscles in his face, his jaw visibly clamped. When he got to his feet, he swayed and then, as if by will-power, stood still and tall.

“Cazidor Diaz,” he said, and the Spanish-accented words curled around her in seduction.

She braced her legs but felt herself leaning toward him. Sucking in her breath, she straightened. “Emma Lemarchal. From New Orleans.” She raised her eyebrows. “Mexico?”

“Spain.”

“Single?” The question came out of her mouth before she could bite it back, even though she’d been sent here to flirt. The master plan to get close to him.

He took a step toward her, and his obsidian eyes blazed. “For now.”

She gasped and held out her hands to stop him. He was moving much faster than the plan. As if he had his own plan, bright and shining in his mind. There before he’d seen her. Sending out his mating call. Come to me. Come.

He took another step toward her. What this man wanted, he went after. And he wanted her. More than any man had wanted her. She felt his desire in every place between her head and her toes, every inch of her skin. And beneath her skin, she burned higher and hotter. Melting from the inside out.

“I know you,” he said with that seductive voice and the accent that made her want to curl up at his feet and whimper. “I know you.”

She stepped closer to him, unable to stop her feet, her breath sucking in, her eyes on his, her mind blank. Under his power.

No! A protest wormed out of her mind. He was yanking her strings, but she was no man’s damn puppet. No, no, no.

Her breath shuddered out. Clenching her jaws, she fought his hold. She couldn’t back up, but she could do the one thing that always empowered her.

He smiled, and the pull intensified. In tiny, jerky increments, she lifted her chin. With every small jerk, the moon shone on her face a bit more, though her gaze never left his. When she felt the glow full on her face, she finally lifted her eyes.

Ahhhhhhh. The moon’s rays slid through the pores of her skin. Pouring into her. Empowering her. Freeing her. He might be an alien or a warlock or just a man with a super high testosterone level, but she had her own defenses. Grand-mere called it woman magic.

The moon filled her, returning her power. She still felt the link between them, but it shrunk to a thin thread, no longer overwhelming her or controlling her movements. Lowering her gaze, she put her hands on her hips. “What the hell did you do to me?”

Before he could answer, the door slammed open behind her. A woman’s voice snapped, “I’m going to see Caz. Touch me and I’ll sue you.”

Caz didn’t take his gaze from Emma’s, but his jaw tensed. The interruption should’ve relieved Emma, but instead a cry rose up in her, as if someone had ripped the connection between them and her heart was bleeding on the terrazzo tiles.