Snippet Saturday - Belong to the City

Big City? How's New York City for big?

 

WITCH'S CURSE

by Myla Jackson

Kindle | Nook | Kobo

BLURB

As punishment for using magic unwisely, Catherine Wein, ex-witch and totally cursed, is doomed to spend each year in a different woman's life. It's New Year's Eve and at the stroke of midnight she'll make the switch to another host's life. Catherine's determined to grab for as much happiness as she can with her remaining hours in Kindra Merlot's body. Enter sexy cop, Sam Cade. 

Dumped by his girlfriend right after Christmas, Sam isn't in the mood to celebrate until he sees the willowy beauty, Kindra. Her sensuality and sexual aggressiveness revives his lagging spirits. Is she the one for him or is she another lying, cheating woman like his ex? Will he have more than tonight to find out?
EXCERPT
The song was ripe for couples to do some serious belly-rubbin’ and a dozen or more couples headed for the dance floor and to the music.

Damn. New Year’s Eve and alone.

“Hey, I got one for you.” BJ handed him a glass of champagne and pointed across the floor at a woman with long, golden blonde hair and a shimmering silver dress that hugged every curve of her body. He glanced around. “Where’s mine?”

Sam missed BJ’s question, his gaze captivated by the woman standing with a glass of champagne, a sad smile playing around her lips. Something about her pale blue eyes and the way she stared with longing at the couples dancing amid soft blinking lights called out to him. Despite his words to the contrary, Sam wanted to meet the woman. His feet shifted and he stepped out.

BJ’s hand smacked him in the arm. “Did I do right by you, buddy?”

Boy, did he. No use letting him in on the news. BJ would just get a big head, besides, Sam wasn’t sure he should move on his instincts to go meet the woman. “I guess she’s all right.”

“Now, where’s mine? I’m anxious to meet the future Mrs. Drake.”

Sam gave his friend an exasperated look. “Aren’t you getting ahead of yourself?”

“I never date a woman I’m not willing to marry.” BJ stared around the room. “So where is she?”

A woman with a shock of bright red curls joined the blonde. Sam squelched the chuckle rising in his chest. Perfect. “She’s next to the blonde. Say hello to the future Mrs. Drake.”

“Hey, I gave you a sex goddess and you give me Little Orphan Annie?”

“BJ Drake, I’ve never known you to pass on a challenge. Are you telling me you aren’t going to give my choice for you a chance?”

BJ scowled. “Some friend you are.” He grabbed another glass of champagne from a passing caterer. “Come on, let’s go meet our futures.”

Now that he was headed across the floor to meet the blonde, Sam wasn’t so sure it was a good idea. What would he say? He’d been out of the dating scene for the most part, having been in a steady relationship for the past year and a half. His gut clenched and butterflies invaded. Storming a crack house wasn’t nearly as nerve-racking as chatting up a strange woman who looked like a supermodel.

Since this was BJ’s idea, Sam couldn’t back out now. Not with BJ headed the same way. Tamping down his nerves, he attacked the task as if he were about to face a crime boss head-on.


Other Authors Participating in Snippet Saturday:
Lauren Dane
Shelli Stevens
Leah Braemel
Jody Wallace
Caris Roane
Eliza Gayle
Lissa Matthews
Mandy M. Roth
McKenna Jeffries
Shiloh Walker
Taige Crenshaw
Delilah Devlin
HelenKay Dimon
TJ Michaels
Myla Jackson

Snippet Saturday: You are Always on My Mind

Today's Theme is You are Always on My Mind. I had to laugh because I knew exactly which story I should post! This isn't the woman always on the man's mind snippet, this is a witch cursed to live in the body and mind of another woman. Her host is always on her mind! It's a wonderfully sexy and heartbreaking short story, should you choose to read the rest of it.

 

Witch's Curse

Amazon Kindle
Barnes & Noble Nook
Kobo

Blurb
As punishment for using magic unwisely, Catherine Wein, ex-witch and totally cursed, is doomed to spend each year in a different woman's life. It's New Year's Eve and at the stroke of midnight she'll make the switch to another host's life. Catherine's determined to grab for as much happiness as she can with her remaining hours in Kindra Merlot's body. Enter sexy cop, Sam Cade. 

Dumped by his girlfriend right after Christmas, Sam isn't in the mood to celebrate until he sees the willowy beauty, Kindra. Her sensuality and sexual aggressiveness revives his lagging spirits. Is she the one for him or is she another lying, cheating woman like his ex? Will he have more than tonight to find out?
Excerpt

“Don’t forget to check on her every day. She needs people, even if she says she doesn’t. Trust me on this.” Catherine moved through the eighteenth-floor studio apartment in the Hell’s Kitchen district of New York City, straightening paintings, fluffing the bright pillows she’d added to the couch and watering the plants she’d grown from clippings off Dolly’s huge collection of houseplants and herbs. Basically, she was delaying her descent to the building lobby for the annual tenants’ New Year’s Eve party.

I don’t need a babysitter. Kindra’s thought made her jump. So often lately, Kindra remained silent, preferring Catherine to handle everything in their shared existence.

“I’ll check on her.” Dolly stood by the door, a determined smile on her freckled face, although tears welled in her bright green eyes. “I can’t believe you won’t be here after tonight. I mean you will, but you won’t. Ah hell. I’ll miss you.”

“You promised me you wouldn’t get all mushy, so don’t go there.” Catherine spun away, refusing to give in to tears. Instead, she marched into the kitchen and yanked the refrigerator door open, snatching the bottle of Merlot from the sparkling clean shelves lined with healthy foods. All the groceries and cheerful decorations throughout the apartment would be her only legacy to Kindra to encourage her to maintain the healthy body Catherine had worked so hard to establish over the past year.

“I can’t believe it’s been a year since I met you.” Dolly took the bottle from Catherine and tucked it under her arm. “I still have a vivid memory of Kindra standing on the ledge outside that window as the clock struck midnight.” She nodded toward the tall window overlooking the bright lights of New York City. “If you hadn’t landed in her body at that exact minute, she’d be dead.”

You should have let me go. I only wanted peace.

“Peace my Aunt Fanny. You were sacrificing a perfectly good life and a boatload of talent. Think of all you’ve accomplished this year.”

I didn’t do it. You did. You’re the strong one.

“And you’re the one with all the talent. I can’t paint my way out of a shoebox.”

It’s not enough.

Dolly’s brows rose into the burnished copper curls brushing across her forehead. “You’re doing it again.”

Catherine’s gaze moved to Dolly and she took a moment to remember Dolly was physically the only other person in the room. “Sorry. Kindra and I were having a little discussion about talent and wasting it.”

Dolly stared at the paintings covering every free space on the walls of the apartment and some standing against the walls. “These are so beautiful. Why doesn’t she put them in a gallery and sell them?”

No! They’re not good enough!

“Kindra thinks they aren’t good enough.” Catherine shook her head. “Tell her, Dolly.”

“I’m glad I know about your little secret, otherwise I’d think you had that multiple personality disorder.” Dolly stared straight at Catherine and plunked her fist on one hip. “Kindra, get over it. These paintings are so stunning and full of emotion, they bring me to tears. The galleries will go wild over them. I have a buddy who works at a gallery down the street. I bet I can get them in there.”

Catherine shook with the force of Kindra’s fear. “Okay, okay. So you won’t take the paintings to the gallery. It’s okay. Dolly won’t make you do it.” She shrugged at Dolly. “You can’t force her.”

Dolly fingered the silver pentacle amulet around her neck, the sign of Wicca. “How do you do that? How can you stand to have two people in one mind?”

“I’m the guest. Kindra owns the body and soul. At midnight, I move on and Kindra is on her own again.” Though her words were flat and matter-of-fact, the closer she’d gotten to the midnight deadline, the more worried she’d been about Kindra. Could the young artist manage on her own? Would she try to commit suicide again?

“I think I would go nuts moving from body to body every year. How disconcerting to wake up in someone else’s life. You must have really pissed off the powers that be.”

Catherine’s jaw tightened. “Just heed my warning. Don’t use your powers for selfish reasons. Follow the Threefold Law to the letter.”

Dolly snorted. “Like I have powers.”

“We each have powers within us, we only have to learn to tap into them.”

“I’m only a play witch, you’re the real deal.”

“Was.” Ninety-nine years ago, she’d broken the Threefold Law of Wicca and used her magical powers to come between a man she thought she loved and the woman he truly loved. The cost for breaking the law was losing her powers and being cursed. And the curse couldn’t have been a simple wart on her nose. No. The Witches Council had to come up with something more elaborate and fitting the crime.

They cursed her to an endless existence of living each year in a different woman’s life. New Year’s Eve a hundred years ago, when the clock struck twelve, her body died and her soul drifted into the body of another woman. For an entire year, she lived in that woman’s life, in that woman’s body, sharing all her hopes, fears, trials and desires. At midnight on New Year’s Eve, she moved to another and so it had been for ninety-nine years.

As midnight approached, Catherine knew her time in this body had reached an end. Kindra Marshall, her current host, wouldn’t remember her when she’d gone, but she’d remember everything else from the past year and hopefully continue on where Catherine had left off.

From the moment she’d leaped into Kindra’s body, Catherine knew she could help the woman. First thing was to get her down off the ledge and back on track in her life.
Other Authors Participating in Snippet Saturday:

Myla Jackson
Lauren Dane
Leah Braemel
Caris Roane
Eliza Gayle
Jody Wallace
McKenna Jeffries
http://shilohwalker.com/website
Taige Crenshaw
Delilah Devlin
Lissa Matthews
TJ Michaels
Mari Carr

Snippet Saturday - Talk Talk Talk

New Cover and it's back up on Kindle and Nook. Check out:

Trouble with Harry

Blurb

In 1924, Harry, and adventurous archeologist, uncovers his greatest find--the tomb of the daughter of Shah Azhi "the devil king", containing the magical stone of Azhi. Legend tells of the stone's great power to grant wishes. When Harry lays his hands on the prize, he's sucked into a bottle to sleep for over eighty years.

In the twenty-first century, lonely museum worker, Edie Ragsdale, has been tasked with cataloging the contents of a sarcophagus. Among the mummified remains of a long-dead princess. Edie finds a bottle. When she brushes away the dust of a thousand years, a naked Harry appears out of thin air. Because she was the one to wake Harry from his long sleep, Edie is able to wish for anything her heart desires and Harry has to grant it! Only her wishes don't always turn out as she plans and Harry can't control all the outcomes. Come along for a rollicking romp and learn that wishes don't always come true, and maybe that's a good thing!

Kindle
Nook

Excerpt

The mummified remains of the woman smelled like dust and old bones. Edie had seen her share of mummies, each telling a story of its own. Tucked next to the mummy’s feet was a bottle, coated in the dust of perhaps thousands of years.

Curious, Edie carefully lifted the bottle and rubbed the sides with the soft cloth she kept tucked in her pocket.

The floor shimmied and thunder rumbled outside.

Edie set the bottle back in the sarcophagus and strode to the dingy window. Was it going to rain? She hadn’t brought an umbrella and she’d be walking home soon. Damn. Why didn’t I bring an umbrella?

What little bit of sky she could see between the buildings looked as it had that morning, although the gloom of dusk cast long shadows into the alley. No clouds skittered by, no hint of rain. Then why had she heard thunder? Maybe it was a garbage truck dropping a dumpster onto the pavement. Sometimes they made enough noise she’d mistake it for thunder.

No matter. The skies were clear and, as soon as she cataloged the items, she could go home. With a shrug, she turned back to her work only to stop dead in her tracks.

A tall, naked man stood next to the ancient coffin, stretching as if he’d just woken from a long sleep.

Edie gasped, the only sound in an otherwise silent cavern. This man very much resembled the pirate in her daydream. Dark-haired, suntanned. Her heart skittered erratically, her pulse banging against her throat. He was naked. Totally naked. Her gaze skimmed—okay, slowly perused—from the top of his shiny black hair and over his angular face, continuing downward. She panned the wide expanse of his smooth brown chest tapering to narrow hips. Nestled in the dark shadow of curly hair, his penis hung flaccid, but still most impressive.

Ohmigod! Edie’s face heated. She’d been staring at his privates. She’d never stared at a man’s privates before. What would he think? Then again, what was a naked man doing in her warehouse? Perhaps he was crazy. Maybe he was a sexually perverted lunatic out to deflower lonely virgins. Edie sank to the floor and gathered up a loose slat from the crate she’d dismembered.

If he was going to rape her, she wasn’t going down without a fight. She stood, her hand gripping the splintered wood. “Who are you and what do you want?”

The man rubbed his eyes and blinked, before he straightened and looked directly at her. “Who are you? And where the hell am I?”

The woman standing before him brandished a wooden slat in his face. “I asked first.”

Harry stepped back and, for the first time, realized he was completely naked. “Holy Jesus.” He leaned over to grab a board but the sharp corner of a board poked his chest. Reflexively, he crossed his hands over his groin.

“Don’t move, or I’ll scream.” The woman poked him again. “What are you doing here? And more importantly, why aren’t you wearing any clothes?”

“Look, lady. I don’t know what’s going on here, but I do not have designs on your person.” He reached to push the point off his ribs, baring his groin, again. “If you’d quit jabbing me with that stick, I’ll cover myself.”

Edie tried really hard to keep her gaze above his shoulders, but some things were just too noticeable to be ignored from the corner of her eye. “Oh.” Her cheeks burned and she stepped back. “Yes, of course.”

He leaned down again to reach for a board.

“Not with that!” The sharp edge caught him in the throat this time, puncturing the skin. Warm liquid oozed down his neck.

He straightened, his hands rising to rest on his hips. “How am I supposed to cover myself with you trying to stab holes in me?”

 “Here, use this.” She struggled with one hand to untie the strap around her neck and waist while maintaining her grip on the board. Then she tossed her canvas apron at him.

Harry deftly caught the apron in a single hand and held it like a fig leaf over the lower half of his torso. Had he drunk himself into a stupor last night? And where was he? Obviously, not in the desert. And why was this woman waving a stick at him. Had his performance in bed been that dismal?

“Go ahead, put it on,” she said, her face flaming, her voice shaking like dry leaves rattling in the wind.

“A lady would look away while a man dressed himself,” he grumbled.

“Look, buster, I’m not turning away for a second, so don’t even think about jumping me.” 

Kindle
Nook

Other Authors Participating in Snippet Saturday:

Rhian Cahill 
Shelli Stevens
Anne Rainey
Jody Wallace
Mari Carr
McKenna Jeffries
Myla Jackson
Taige Crenshaw
Delilah Devlin
HelenKay Dimon
Lauren Dane
Shiloh Walker
TJ Michaels
Leah Braemel