#SPeekSunday - 5/4/14 - Mortal Illusions - Claire goes on the attack #Vampires #ParanormalRomance

For a vampire, love means watching someone you care about die.

Sneak Peek Sunday is a weekly excerpt hop where each author shares six paragraphs from a published work or a WIP (work in progress).

My submission for this week is from my 1st book, Mortal Illusions. A vampire romance published by New Concepts Publishing, Mortal Illusions is currently the first in a series of 3 books.  Its sequel, Fatal Desire, is currently under production.

In this excerpt, which is the beginning of the first chapter, Germaine St. Justine has sensed his former lover's pain and visits her in the hospital in an effort to ease her suffering.  After some gentle teasing combined with a soothing back rub, he gently bites her neck and draws out a few seconds worth of blood, then uses a hypodermic needle to withdraw blood from his arm.  Germaine adamantly refuses to make another vampire, but he doesn't want Marguerite to suffer.  Unfortunately, she wants more than he is willing to give, so to reassure her his affections haven't altered despite the many years they've been apart, he kisses her.  When Claire walks in to discover a stranger kissing her dying mother, she assumes the gentleman is up to no good and reacts accordingly.  Germaine, however, is less than amused by her rancor.

            "She's just worried about me," Marguerite insisted, but Germaine sensed a sudden quickening in her pulse rate and reached for her wrist in an overly protective and unnecessary gesture.

            Your pulse is racing, he cautioned her silently.  Calm down.

            I'm trying, but I don't want her to think badly of you . . .   Her response came to him slowly while her mind stretched muscles it hadn't exercised for many years.  He recognized the effort it took for her to reuse a skill she'd long forgotten she possessed, but what bothered him more was the energy she was expending to rectify her daughter's impression of him.

            To his mind, he'd done nothing that warranted a defense.  Although he was honest enough to admit that the daughter might not view things exactly from his perspective.  Even so….

            "Clarissa," Marguerite began in a reasonable tone, "this is--Germaine.  André's son.  You remember me telling you about André, don't you?  He's French.  He was merely greeting me in the usual way of his countrymen when they renew long lost acquaintances--no more."

            Clarissa Danielson's brows raised in open skepticism.  "Is that so?"  Blue eyes glared at him with hot suspicion.  "I saw you take my mother's pulse.  Was that another French custom, or do you profess to be a doctor as well?"

Marguerite's feisty daughter tends to attack first and ask questions later, a trait that is going to get her into a lot of trouble.

M/F, Contemporary vampire romance in a society based on D/s.

Read the first three chapters at: Mortal Illusions

Buy the book at NCP, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or ARe

Thanks for visiting.  I hope you enjoyed this brief excerpt and want more. Please click the link below to continue your hop Sneak Peek Sunday Wishing you a wonderful journey.