Thursday, 21 June 2012

The Faery Tree by Cherie Noel.





And: if you go over and comment at Cherie’s blog – ‘Tales from the writing cave’ – By noon tomorrow EST… Cherie will enter you in the draw to win a copy of this fabulous book. The link is at the bottom of this post.


BLURB:

Seelie Fae Prince Ee-an, brought up in as a royal foster son in the Unseelie court, seeks love guidance from a seer—and learns of a shocking circumstance.

Thomas Hume, fleeing an ugly breakup, moves across the country and into an old brick building with an otherworldly tree in its backyard. Branches move when no wind blows. Tiny lights glow from it in the night. Only the reasonable rent and an ironclad lease keep him there.

Finding a portal between the two worlds open, Ee-an travels to the human realm to find his foretold mate. Fae laws forbid Ee-an to stay in the human realm. Thomas’s adopted daughter and younger brother are unable to cross the veil into Faery. Can Ee-an and Thomas find a way to honor their obligations without losing hope for a happily-ever-after future?

EXCERPT:

I woke from what had to be the weirdest dream ever to find myself lying on a mattress that felt the way I imagined floating on a cloud must, covered in a fluffy, forest green comforter. I was not in my bed. I had a battle scarred queen bed that had belonged to some pre-teen girl in its former life. This was made blatantly obvious by the random splashes of various shades of nail polish and the occasional scribbles attesting to the fact that the owner would love Justin Bieber forever. On second thought, the bed had probably belonged to some lucky pre-teen queer boy with liberal parents before I found it at the Salvation Army. After all, what self respecting straight girl would chase after Justin Bieber, even in her mind? He was far too pretty to be straight. Everyone knew that… well, at least every hopeful young queer did.

Ee-an’s rumbling bass tones came through the cracked open door, eased along the hardwood floor and crawled up onto the heavenly bed with me, rather in the manner of a friendly hound. He spoke some lilting language I couldn’t make heads or tails of, but thought might be Gaelic. It sounded a bit like the elves from The Lord of the Rings movie starring Viggo Mortensen and Orlando Bloom. Those two were a double dose of yum in my book, even if they did dress funny and, at least in Aragorn’s case, have the bad taste to fall in love with a woman.

I pushed myself up and was treated to a moment of wooziness. I must have made some noise because Ee-an’s conversation broke off and then the door to the room I was in pushed open.

“Thomas? Is that you?”

As the door swung wide, the faint whimper escaping my throat turned to a moan.

Ee-an stood, back lit and perfectly framed in the dark wood of the door frame. He wore a pair of black leather trousers that molded to his firm thighs with loving devotion. And that was it. The pants laced partway up the front, and they were only laced half way. I could see a light trail of dark hair leading down from his bellybutton to where the waist of the pants would lie if they were closed all the way. There the—oh so happy—trail broadened. His torso was gloriously bare. My gaze wandered across sculpted pecs, down across a firm mid-section which hinted at a six pack, and then back up to the rounded tops of his well-muscled shoulders.

Oh yeah.

I could so see myself holding onto those broad shoulders as he fucked all sense out of me up against a wall. I must have whimpered again at that point because the next thing I knew, Ee-an was easing me back down against the bed, his brow crinkling up and his lips pinching together.

“Thomas? Are you in pain?”

His warm brown eyes searched my face, peering into my eyes as though he could see my very soul. I blinked owlishly up at him and then did possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. I ran the tips of my fingers across the stubble lining his jaw and traced the outline of his plush lips.

“So soft…”

Ee-an’s eyes darkened and his nostrils flared.

Score. Maybe not the dumbest thing I’d ever done, then.

He pulled in a deep breath, drawing my eyes and my stupid hands to his chest. His nipples hardened as I watched. He leaned down toward me, pausing just before his lips would have brushed my mouth.

“I’m going to kiss you now unless you give me aught reason I shouldn’t.”

I moaned again, closing my eyes and opening my mouth. Ee-an’s lips lit upon my own as lightly as the brush of butterfly wings, once and again. Then he sealed his lips carefully over mine, slid his tongue into my mouth and stroked it along mine teasingly. His hands slid over my chest, and I cursed the invention of clothing. My shirt kept me from feeling the rasp of his skin on mine. I could feel the heat though, and I thought in that moment that I could happily spend the rest of my life right here, with his tongue in my mouth and his hands on my body. Only, in a perfect world, this would happen with far less clothing between us. A guy’s gotta have goals, you know?

After a bit, the damned inconvenient necessities of life, like oxygen, got in the way of the best kiss I’d ever been blessed to participate in. Ee-an pulled back slowly, brushing my lips with his own, ending the kiss just as he’d started it, with a whisper across my lips.

“Delicious.”

Again I found myself blinking up into his melted chocolate eyes without two thoughts to rub together in my brainpan. I realized that my hips were straining upward, seeking to press my painfully hard cock against any part of him I could reach. I forced my over-eager body to relax back down onto the bed.

“I… best kiss ever. Again?”

Ee-an chuckled, dropped one of those butterfly kisses at the corner of my mouth and pushed himself back up to standing with an impressive flex of those biteable shoulders. I sighed. Propping myself up on an elbow, I quirked an eyebrow at him and asked the question that had been burning up my pea-sized brain since I woke.

“Um… where am I?”

Ee-an flashed a smile. My belly quivered. Seriously, when do peoples’ bellies quiver? You know, outside of romance novels?

Sheesh.

I could feel a warm tide rising up my throat to wash across my cheeks and forehead. Yeah, I aced Dork 101 without needing any of the study aides. So?

Ee-an sobered for a moment, his eyes seeming to search my features intently before he grasped my forearms and hauled me back to a seated position. The woozy feeling was gone. Go figure. Heh. He really did kiss my boo-boo all better.

His deep rumble broke into my meandering thoughts. “You look much better, Thomas. As to where you are: you’re at my place. When we got home from the hospital last night you said there was no one at your place to keep an eye on you so I brought you here.”

Damn.

Double Damn.

I’d spent the night with Ee-an and had no fracking memory of it. I quickly clenched my ass-cheeks together. Nope, there was no lingering soreness there. I guess he hadn’t taken advantage of my weakened state.

Pity.

Ee-an kept speaking, and I forced my mind to catch up with the real life happenings going on right in front of me rather than swimming through the infinite sea of my imaginings. Ee-an shook his head. Quirking a brow at me he spoke, his expression made it obvious that he was repeating something he’d already said.

“Do you know when your brother and daughter will be back from visiting your friends in Pennsylvania?”

I blinked at him.

Gods.

His voice was getting me hard again.

“I—uh, they should be home by this afternoon.”

Ee-an nodded, his eyes crinkling as he smiled. “Do you want to stay here until they get back? You know, just so you won’t be on your own.”

I opened my mouth to suavely reply to that ordinary question. But, of course, being me meant that it could never be that simple. I listened in horror to the words spilling from my traitorous mouth.

“Wait? Like, naked waiting? Is that code for sex?”

Ee-an took a step back, his mouth falling open and his eyes widening as his face flooded with color. His sultry voice shook as he stammered his way through a response. “No—not naked. It—I—that is here. Stay. I mean you should stay in your clothes. And wait. For your brother and, ah—I’m going to make us some lunch. S-s-salad? I’ll toss a salad. No. I—I mean I’ll make salad. Caesar.”

Ee-an fled to the kitchen, but I was not dismayed. The sight of the enormous erection he sported while running from the room smacked into my awareness like a solid oak clue-by-four. Hah. Those two functioning brain cells I have kicked into action and told me that the big hunk who’d all but run screaming into the other room was all mine even if he wasn’t aware of it yet.

Caesar salad sounded like a fine entrée, but I was shooting for an appetizer that the chef hadn’t listed on today’s menu. An evil grin stretched my ordinary lips wide. A filthy little chuckle worked its way up through my chest to ring through Ee-an’s room.

“I think I’ll start with a protein shake. I am a growing boy, after all.”

You can find Cherie at:







2 comments:

  1. Oh, NJ, your site is so Fecking Smexy. I get shivers every time I look at it. *happy sigh* And thanks for the shout out. When is your next release?

    ReplyDelete
  2. Not until I actually sub something I have been a tad slack for the last couple of things...

    ReplyDelete