#SPeekSunday - 9/28/14 - Mortal Illusions - Personal watchdogs can bite #ParanormalRomance #Vampires

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.  Marguerite informs Germaine that Claire has set herself up as her personal watchdog--wanting to know what kind of treatments the hospital is giving her, along with all the other gory details about her care.

            "Well, somebody's got to do it," Clarissa murmured begrudgingly as she leaned over to kiss her mother's cheek.  Sitting close enough to touch her, Germaine noticed beneath the young woman's admonishing pose that she was actually trembling.  She was scared, all right, but of what?  She straightened and moved away as if his nearness bothered her, but spared him only the briefest glance before she smiled warmly at her mother.  That smile nagged at him, too.  It was familiar somehow, yet he couldn't quite place it.

            "You're looking much better this evening," Clarissa said with the false brightness mortals reserved for the very old and the very sick--conditions for which recovery was neither expected nor possible.  "I think your fever's finally broken."  She retrieved an old-fashioned glass thermometer, definitely not hospital-issue, from the nearby chest and shook it down.  "Let's see what your temperature is tonight, shall we?"

            Marguerite averted her head.  "Germaine's already taken it.  It's normal.  Isn't it, Germaine?"

            He smiled at the reminder of her earlier playacting.  "Perfectly."

            "Do you mind if I confirm that?" the daughter snapped at him.

            "Not at all."  He appropriated the thermometer from the young woman and held Marguerite's chin.  "As your daughter seems reluctant to accept our word, I suggest we humor her."

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.