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apparitionism · 5 years ago

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Decalogue

Ten years! I certainly didn’t expect to be observing such a Bering-and-Wells first-meeting anniversary, and I double certainly didn’t expect to be doing it while staying at home during a pandemic. The situation has, in all honesty, severely limited my creativity; I admire and envy those who are able to produce good work under these conditions, but I’m not among them. So ideally, this would have been better... a few sentences here and there say what I want them to, though, and I’m going to take a tiny bit of solace in that. This is the first half of this anniversary piece; the second half will happen when it happens, but I’ll aim for sooner rather than later. I do promise, for anyone who cares, that I’m still working on Run and everything else.

Decalogue

Year one: Meet at gunpoint.

Each of Myka’s Helena years could be marked and counted by the unique commandment it issued, a commandment by which she was forced, or graced, to live... and if “meet at gunpoint” was no “I am the Lord thy God... thou shalt have no other gods before me,” nonetheless it was first, for that first year, that short year, that long year, that year of confrontation. That year of threats sliding so easily into thrills, and sliding just as easily back again.

When Myka looked back, she couldn’t remember (she couldn’t remember!) the extent to which she had, in the moment of the first standoff, understood it as the beginning it was. If she had been able to perceive, all at once, the rush of dictates that would follow the first leveling of her weapon at H.G. Wells, would she have been able to stand so steely and so sure?

Steely. Sure. That was what she enacted, that first time.

As gunpoint followed gunpoint, that was increasingly not what she felt.

Tamalpais showed her the mismatch between her awareness of threat and susceptibility to thrill.

Moscow—without the urgency of the gun—showed her how easy it was for thrill to take over.

The urgency of the gun... one middle-of-night at the B&B, very late, Myka just managed to avoid blindly colliding with Helena in the unlit hallway that separated their bedrooms.

“We meet again,” Helena whispered.

“At least it isn’t at gunpoint this time,” Myka whispered back, close to breathless in the dark.

“It might be.”

“What?”

“I can’t see your hands. It’s dark. You could be armed. Or I could.”

Threat or thrill? Myka’s body said “both.” Her mind said “neither” and “go back to your own room.” Later (minutes later, then days then months then years later), she wondered what would have happened if her mind hadn’t won out. If she had said what her body prompted, when Helena said “I can’t see your hands”: No, but you could feel them.

In Egypt, foolishly, she had had that night on her mind, that night she had not let her body have its way. She had been looking forward, considering how to engineer a do-over, a hotel-hallway meeting, something breathed about gunpoint, about hands, some answering breath of what might be felt instead. The real instead: she was yanked back to the present, feeling only soft, astonished disbelief that dissolved into shocked pain as Helena pulled a trigger.

Then at Yellowstone... every gunpointing, every day, every night, every threat, every thrill ran in her head, forcing her to reckon them, to add them together, to total the end of the world.

But there was no reckoning any of it, in the end. Or in the endless: reckoning was all there was, endless reckoning, endless rethinking, endless negotiating with herself over what she had allowed herself to do (and to feel), and the price she would force herself to pay for her lapses.

Year two: Thou shalt not touch.

Myka tried to punish herself sufficiently—to lay the lash for accurate agony— but she should have known that her own imagination would be inadequate. She thought she had fathomed how wrong she had been, and what she deserved for that wrongness, but the Regents knew better. They knew her exiling herself to the family bookstore was a pathetic penance.

Of course Helena herself was the only right scourge. Of course she was.

And of course Myka had not ever expected to be able to touch Helena. Not ever again, not after what had happened. But, equally, she hadn’t expected touch to be so tantalizingly impossible. She hadn’t expected the ache of desire to be so much more acute upon being confronted over and over (and over yet again) with the impossibility of its fulfilment.

Myka hadn’t consciously thought the word “desire” before, but now it preoccupied her. Helena unexpected in the space of that bookstore: desire. Helena in Artie’s office, speaking like an oracle: desire. Helena bleak in a field in Ohio: desire. Helena saving the day with words about consequences and sorrow: desire. And certainly Helena in a Warehouse aisle, talking of truth and regret and what had once so briefly and brightly been good: not a body, but the visual embodiment of all that Myka desired.

Even later, even when everything seemed to be ending, even when Helena was giving up and looking at the sky and Myka was being a coward and letting her do it: desire. And its frustration. No touching, no embrace of the only body that mattered, because it wasn’t there. The only body that mattered to Myka was elsewhere.

A commandment, but also a punishment: and as a punishment, was it just? That judgment was above Myka’s pay grade. Everything was above her pay grade. Everything was put above her pay grade. Pushed above it, onto a shelf just that much higher than she could reach.

In the absence of the prohibition, would she have wanted to touch Helena so very very much?

In the absence of the prohibition, would she have been so very very willing to read Helena as wanting so very very much to touch too?

She thought the answers to those questions didn’t matter, because she shied from imagining that the day could be saved in such a way as to allow for real satisfaction of those clearly commandment-violating wants. And she wondered, later, if the rope-induced violation—though brief and fraught and not their fault—was the inexorable cause of the next year’s anguish.

Year three: Suffer in silence.

Nothing Myka said made a difference. Nothing she said was of consequence, not after Helena disappeared. She tried. At first, she tried, repeating “Where is she?” endlessly to anyone with ears and power, in response to which she was, endlessly, put off: Helena was on a secret mission for the Regents. Helena was engaged in arcane Warehouse business. Helena had affairs of her own to settle...

Eventually Myka stopped asking: that was the first silence. And she thought she was suffering; naively, she thought the absence of information, with its echo of the absence of Helena’s physical body, was the worst torment.

She was wrong.

In Boone, the requirement that Myka suffer became acute.

She tried to violate the commandment—tried to ease her suffering by breaking the silence. But the person to whom she was speaking refused to hear her.

She really did have to laugh at how unimaginative she had been: how she had thought the inability to touch Helena was too much, was the worst price, to pay. The Regents, or fate, or whatever was in charge certainly did know how to alter one’s retrospective view... because now Myka could touch Helena, could even embrace her. All while suffering Helena’s new knout of a wish to have nothing at all to do with Myka. Myka wanted to howl against that incomprehensible wish, scream in protest, make Helena listen. Make Helena hear. Instead, the words Myka did say didn’t matter; they all translated to I am being silent.

Different silence. More suffering.

Myka also had cancer and did not speak much about it, though that was suffering, and silence, of a far different kind. She wished she had said even less, later, because her speaking led, stupidly, into the next year.

Year four: Make mistakes.

Looking at her life over that fourth year, Myka saw that she had never before made 365 days’ worth of such terrible mistakes. Not even during the year through which she and Helena had pointed guns at each other. (And that was of course yet another mistake, to ideate those gunpointings as mistakes.)

She looked at the idea of being with Pete and didn’t dismiss it out of hand as an impossibility. She knew it was a mistake, and yet at every step, she did not dismiss it: mistake upon mistake.

Eventually: “You think this is a mistake,” he accused.

This... this was the path. She could see no other way forward. Myka had always been very good at putting her head down and following the path. “No,” she said out loud to him. That was a mistake too—or so it seemed, in the first instant, as she saw his face flash with anger.

But in the next instant, it seemed the first right thing she’d done in a long time, because he said, “You’re lying.” Out loud.

The full force of it hit her: she was lying. And that was by far her worst mistake.

“I’m sorry,” she told him, because she was.

“So am I,” he said, but Myka knew they weren’t sorry for the same things.

Her mistakes usually redounded to her alone; they didn’t hurt other people. And yet she did wonder what sort of mistake Pete had made: what future had he imagined he and Myka could have? Marriage, children? That seemed to be what he was asking for, even if he’d never said that out loud, but why would he have thought Myka wanted those things in such a conventional way? Had he never seen her as herself?

Then again, who ever saw any other human as the self they believed themselves to be?

Myka asked herself that question, philosophically, then immediately castigated, You set yourself up for this one, Bering. Because that was how Myka had felt seen by Helena, in their best moments. No matter how ultimately untrue that sense of being seen might have been, she knew Pete was never going to look at her and make her feel that way. But of course Helena was never going to look at her like that again either, given her absence, so Myka made yet another mistake: in Helena’s absence, she allowed herself to blame Helena for it all.

And that very nearly became the ruin of everything.

Year five: Thou shalt not hold grudges.

The miracle of Helena’s return to the Warehouse had not, at first, seemed to be a miracle. Instead it was a rebuke, a shout about everything Myka had done wrong. All her mistakes, highlighted. Go away, Myka wanted to tell her. Just go away. Helena’s presence prompted an eerie echo of going home to Colorado: a constant knocking reminder of the whole wrong string of things she could have done, should have done, better.

Claudia was responsible for the real miracle. Myka had taken—not consciously, she told herself later; not consciously—to walking slowly in the hallway, particularly late at night, particularly when no one else seemed to be awake. Later, she of course realized she’d been looking for that do-over, but at the time, she’d colored herself restless. Just restless.

So when, one night, Claudia opened her door onto Myka’s dark hallway pace, Myka was, to put it mildly, surprised. She was even more surprised when Claudia said, “This nonstop lurking? It’s creepy. You’re not a ghost, so knock off acting like one.” Myka said a swift “okay” and tried to retreat to her room, but Claudia marched out, crossed the hall, and knocked on Helena’s door, saying, “H.G., get out here! It’s time!”

And there was Helena, not sleep-fogged as she should have been.

“Batter up,” Claudia told her, “or throw the pitch or take the handoff or whatever sportsball thing you want to do. My work here better be done.” She then went back to her room, closed the door, and locked it with a conclusive snick.

“Claudia has it right,” Helena said. “It’s time.”

“For what?” Myka asked. She knew she sounded thick. But she couldn’t... something. Couldn’t something, couldn’t anything. She couldn’t identify, not even in her own head, what she couldn’t do, or say, or think. Any of it. And now here stood Helena, the cause of it all. I might not have been happy before, but before, I had only myself to blame... now I have you.

“For what...” That was accompanied by a mirthless laugh. “Do you not know why I’m here?”

Myka did not have to give her answer any thought—the only thought she had was whether she should say it out loud. But maybe it was time. “To break my heart. That’s always why you’re here. Or there. Or anywhere.”

“As if you’ve left my heart alone,” Helena scoffed.

As if she had no idea what being silent had cost Myka. “I have tried so hard to leave your heart alone.”

Now Helena snorted. “You claimed to be in love with Pete. What do you think that did to my heart?”

“I don’t care what anything did to your heart,” Myka said, and she was in that moment telling the absolute truth. “You claimed to be in love with Nate. And Giselle. And god knows who else you didn’t tell me about.”

“Don’t put words into my mouth! I claimed to be in love with no one.”

“Fine,” Myka conceded, mulishly. “Who cares about love? You put words in your own mouth and spat them at me: how you belonged. With some random man and some daughter who wasn’t even yours.”

“So in retribution, you decided you belonged with Pete.” Helena curled her lip and nodded a sour nod. “Good judgment all around.”

“Don’t insult him. He’s a good person. He actually cares about me.”

Helena took that as the accusation it was. “That’s low.”

It was Myka’s turn to snort. “That’s low? Yeah, because you throwing Nate in my face—making me look at him, making me look at you stand next to him—that was so elevated.” Helena took a breath, as if to defend herself, but that made Myka push on, “And then Giselle—with you going out of your way to make sure I knew, like it was the most important thing in the world for me to be informed about exactly who you were with who wasn’t me—that was so exalted. Please. Spare me.”

Helena pressed her lips into a line, then very consciously unpressed them. She lowered her shoulders, which had hackled into rigid wings. “Fine. I will.” She went back to her room, and she did not slam the door, but she closed it such that Myka felt finality. No more slow walks, she told herself, and she turned to go to her own room, to close its door with the same sense of an ending.

But again, Claudia intervened, opening her own door and springing, sharp and swift as a wolf, to grab Myka’s arm before she could complete her turn, her escape. “Pay attention!” Claudia said. “In sportsball, you have to do something with the ball.”

She kept her hold on Myka and banged on Helena’s door, through which Helena said, “We are finished.”

Claudia said, “We’re just getting started. I swear to god I will stand here and yell for hours, because Myka’s not a ghost and neither are you.”

A minute passed. Another. Claudia did not yell, and for those moments they were all ghosts, waiting, in-between some before and whatever would come after.

Finally the door handle began to turn, hinges creaked, and Helena emerged again, her face blank, but rigidly so, as if she were concentrating on each muscle, holding every one still.

“Get it right,” Claudia said. She let Myka go, then muttered, as she retreated, “I swear to god.”

I swear to god, Myka thought, I wish I knew what “right” could possibly mean.

Helena cleared her throat. “Claudia holds strong beliefs.”

That was not what Myka had expected to hear. “Good for her. Or bad. I don’t know.”

“I don’t either. I’m exhausted,” Helena said. She slumped a bit.

It seemed to be a too-conscious illustration, designed to spark sympathy, and it enraged Myka. “Fine,” she snapped. “Get some sleep if she’ll let you. I’m done here.”

“She won’t let me. So you are not done here.”

“What am I supposed to do?” Myka demanded. “Forget everything that happened?” She ended on a crescendo; she had never made such noise in the night before.

Helena did not answer. She stood and breathed—a real body in space—the sound of the sea in, then out. Myka felt her own angry breathing slow in response. In response. To a real body in space, breathing audibly in, out. Chest rising and falling.

What wouldn’t Myka have given, a year ago, two years ago, three, four, to be right here? Was she supposed to forget everything that happened? No, she needed to remember everything instead. Remember everything that hurt, and why.

“Okay,” Myka said.

“Okay what? What is okay?”

“Nothing,” Myka admitted.

“Okay.” And Helena’s mouth moved a little—not a smile, but something like the beginning of one.

Myka didn’t smile either, but she felt her jaw soften, her teeth unclench. “Okay what? What’s okay?”

Helena nodded. “Nothing,” she said.

“Neither of us is good at letting go,” Myka said. She did not have to add: of grudges. Or of each other.

Helena said, “I know,” and she did not have to add anything either.

Myka had tried not to anticipate this moment—because it was never going to happen. Never, never, never. But she had, of course. Anticipated. Wished. Dreamed, literally dreamed about it, then awakened to loss, a dissolve of desire that would never be satisfied.

Now, desire dissolved into satiety, rich and soft, as they neared each other, as their mouths met and their bodies pressed and their hands grasped and they did not let go.

Words of love—even the very word “love”—might have occurred to some people in such a moment, but all Myka could think to say, as they looked at each other in the wake of that world-beginning kiss, was “Thank you.”

And so grudges alchemized to gratitude.

TBC

#bering and wells #Warehouse 13 #fanfic #Decalogue #happy anniversary to them #and to us (although it's of course not quite ten years since that episode aired)

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hannah-deserved-better · 6 years ago

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Dystopian Crossovers

A multi-fandom, multi-pairing crossover of Supernatural, Star Trek TNG, DS9, VOY, X-files, Buffy, and the Hobbit movie verse.

These are the one-shot, two-shot, short multi-chapter adventures of the small San Francisco colony of humans. After a major disaster in the 24th century, a temporal distortion occurred which destroyed Earth in the 24th century. It also fractured other dimensions such as Middle Earth causing contamination on a colossal scale.

The disaster is thought to have been caused by experiments with the omega molecule but no one could be certain. It’s also a coincidence that at the same time, dark magic on middle earth and meddling in the natural environment by a group of rogue angels and demons in the 21st century may have added to the disaster.

Whatever the cause, Earth is now a wasteland. The setting is 2018 San Francisco after the eruption of three super volcanoes (Yellowstone, Toba, and Taupo), a nuclear explosion in DC, London, and Los Angeles, and a comet strike in the middle of the Atlantic have led to a complete wasteland.

Note: there are some controversial, rare-pair and completely made up pairings and ships below. If you aren’t prepared to have an open mind, or if you plan on sending me hate of any kind, do not continue. Also note this is very, very long.

The Characters and ships

So these characters and ships are my absolute OTPs in all my favorite shows. With the exception of one crossover pairing and a few others, these are pairings which I have been into since I first saw the shows. This is especially true where Star Trek is concerned because starting with TNG, I was a trekkie since I was 3 years old. Yes, I know they are all M/F or F/M but that isn’t relevant. This is really because these are the ships that I like all in one spot. In short, this collection of stories is all about me, myself, and I. These are my all time favorite OTPs and it really comes down to personal preference: my personal preference. And because there are so many characters I had to limit it to my absolute favorites in each show.

And yes there are so many other characters I would have loved to add in here and are certainly not forgotten but I am only one person and there are a lot of characters as it is so lots of characters just didn’t make the cut. If there were 10 of me then a lot more characters and a lot more variety of m/f, f/f, and m/m pairings would be possible but there aren’t 10 of me so it is what it is.

So here are the ships:

Janeway and Chakotay from Star Trek: Voyager

Picard and Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation

Kira and Odo from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

Dean and Jo from Supernatural

Sam and Eileen from Supernatural

Crowley and Meg from Supernatural

Castiel and Hannah from Supernatural

Buffy and Angel from Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Willow and Charlie from Buffy and Supernatural

Fili and my OC Brenna from the Hobbit movie verse

Kili and my OC Asphodel from the Hobbit Movie verse

Mulder and Scully from X-files

If you request to do your own one-shots using this verse, you are welcomed to add whatever additional characters and ships you want, including OCs, but the above pairings are non-negotiable.

Also, writings for this story will be rare because again, I am only one person and when I feel inspired to write something, I will. And I won’t be going in order so there will be seasons and it will all be labeled as to what season.

Here’s the backstory for each series. Note that timelines will conflict so for character ages, refer to the seasons I have them in:

Star Trek Voyager

Takes place in season 6/7 right after the events of Unimatrix Zero

Kathryn Janeway was recovering from her experience with the Borg and being assimilated. She’d been taking a few days shore leave in the holodeck and Chakotay had joined her for a pleasant evening in Tuscany. They were having dinner when the disaster occurred and they were transported to Earth in 2018. When they arrived, they found the planet in ruin.

Star Trek Deep Space Nine

Takes place in season 5 / 6 during the battle with the Dominion

As Starfleet and the Klingons, led by the USS. Defiant, were trying to retake DS9 from the occupying dominion. Kira and Odo, their relationship strained from the events with the female shapeshifter, were trying to defend the station when they were transported to Earth in 2018.

Star Trek The Next Generation

Takes place in season 3 / 4 right after the battle of Wolf 359.

Dr. Crusher meets up with Captain Picard shortly after the events that made him Locutus. He was showing her around his brother’s vineyard in France, introducing her to his brother when the accident occurred and sent them to Earth 2018.

Supernatural

Takes place in Season 5 shortly before the accident with the hellhounds.

Instead of hellhounds, Lucifer decides to go with a new plan. Destroy the planet naturally. With a snap of his fingers, three Super volcanoes become active. Sam and Dean have only a few precious hours before their world is changed forever. First Yellowstone, then Toba in Indonesia, then Taupo in New Zealand. One by one, these volcanoes erupt, causing massive destruction, global economies to collapse, and civilization to be reduced to anarchy. Within a few short months, after terrorist organizations take advantage of the situation by dropping nuclear bombs on Washington DC and London.

In retaliation for what Lucifer did, Michael launched an asteroid at Earth, the impact in the middle of the Atlantic caused devastating tsunamis in Africa and South America.

The planet is now locked in a seemingly eternal ice age caused by the triple effect of a volcanic winter and an impact winter.

Dean, Sam, Castiel, and Jo make their way to San Francisco, the peninsula is becoming a last stand against vampires, demons, and other creatures waiting to take advantage. The whole city has been warded against demons and angels and as such, Castiel has lost his grace.

Hannah: Hannah was among the angels loyal to heaven, but she also against the apocalypse. She defied heaven to undermine Michael’s efforts, as punishment, she was dropped from heaven and forced into Caroline Johnson’s body. Caroline, whose husband was killed in the eruptions, was struggling to survive in Montana. Hannah took control of her and made her way to San Francisco.

Eileen: Eileen Leahy had already been in San Francisco when the disaster occurred. She’d arrived from Dublin to finish her studies on anthropology at San Francisco State. When the disaster occurred, she was stranded since airplanes can’t fly in volcanic debris.

Charlie: Finishing up her masters in tech in San Francisco, Charlie was also in the city when the disaster occurred. Proving to be resourceful in a crisis, she helped to use the city muni subway systems as refuge areas for displaced families.

Crowley: Crowley escaped with the Winchesters when Lucifer set of the eruptions. He loses his powers and becomes stranded with them.

Meg: Meg was supposed to send the hellhounds after the Winchesters but when she failed, Lucifer banished her and she became a rogue. Reluctantly, she was forced to join forces with the Winchesters.

X-files

Takes place in between season 5 and 6 right after the events of the movie.

After returning from their event in Antarctica, Mulder and Scully are in Washington when a nuclear bomb caused them to evacuate, barely escaping with their lives. They made it across the country to San Francisco.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Takes place shortly after Sunnydale is destroyed at the end of season 7.

After the scoobies separate, the eruptions occur and Buffy and Willow make their way to Los Angeles to team up with Angel who then goes with them to San Francisco.

Hobbit

Takes place after the battle of the five armies

When Fili and Kili are separated from the rest of the company and left to fend for themselves in Laketown while the dragon pummels the defenseless town on the lake. Fili and Kili are dealt an additional blow while, during their attempt to escape with Tauriel and the others, the brothers are separated and stranded in the town. The disaster occurs and Fili and Kili are transported to a new world- modern earth 2018 in San Francisco.

Asphodel: Asphodel Cheesewillow is a typical hobbit who, while on holiday with her parents, is separated and lost in the Old Forest. She is transported to Earth.

Brenna Norrsken: Brenna is a gnome from the far north of the Forodwaiths. Her particular race of gnomes are female dominated and she and her mother were part of a whaling crew. During a particularly difficult battle with a whale, Brenna is thrown overboard and then transported.

Seasons

Yes, I am taking prompt requests, PM me for requests. Also, I am willing to work with any number of authors and artists who are interested in doing their own one shots and short stories but please remember this is MY world and MY rules. Pretty much the only rules I have are please use the appropriate ships as defined above, and please no hardcore smut. Abstract, soft smut is fine.

Seasons 1-7: Is all about them surviving in the new world created by the disasters. The 24 of them have banded together in San Francisco, along with a group of refugees. All around their little peninsula are extreme dangers. In the rest of the world, vampires, werewolves, demons, angels, and other beings have taken over. Michael dominates parts of the planet while Lucifer dominates other parts.

Seasons 8-19: as everyone has paired off by now, a series of pregnancies occur, many of which were acts of supernatural intervention.

Season 6: Hannah has a daughter, Devorah,

Season 7: Kira has a daughter, Meru,

Season 8: Janeway has twins, Jessalyn and Jordan,

Season 9: Buffy has a son, Adrien,

Season 10: Jo has a son, Jonathan

Season 11: Eileen has a daughter Lillian

Season 12: Scully has a daughter, Samantha

Season 13: Charlie has a son, Justin

Season 14: Asphodel has twins, Sighreth and Daire

Season 15: Meg has a son, Dameon

Season 16: Beverly has a daughter, Kayla

Season 17: Brenna has a son Kastrin

Seasons 20 and on: The Next Generation

#writing prompts #taking requests #star trek #supernatural #hobbit #Buffy the Vampire Slayer

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joyffree · 7 years ago

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RELEASE BOOST Title: Oscar SJ McCoy @authorsjmccoy Genre: Contemporary Romance @givemebooksblog Series: The Davenports #1 Release Date: March 27, 2018

BLURB

Oscar Davenport always wins. Always. He doesn’t come second, and he sure as hell doesn’t lose. He’s founded and sold three tech companies, netting him almost a billion dollars. He ran a hedge fund worth hundreds of billions—until he got bored. His latest project, Six, a nightclub in LA is another winner. It’s both a successful business and a playground full of playmates.

He’s never met an obstacle he couldn’t overcome or a woman he couldn’t have. Until now.

Grace Evans is the kind of girl you’d find curled up with a good book on a Saturday night—at least, usually. This Saturday night is different. This Saturday night she’s gotten all done up, in a dress she can barely breathe in and heels she can barely walk in. She had to. She had to venture into the lair of the enemy.

The enemy is Oscar Davenport, and his lair is his swanky nightclub. When she lays eyes on him, she’s ready to believe he’s the devil incarnate. His wicked smile, his beautiful eyes—everything about him is an invitation to sin. He moves with the grace and arrogance of a big cat about to pounce. Unfortunately, he’s moving straight toward her. He’s singled her out as his prey. He’s moving in for the kill.

Little does he know that she isn’t about to surrender; in fact, he’s in for the fight of his life.

GOODREADS LINK: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38450937-oscar

PURCHASE LINKS

US: http://amzn.to/2G38QaX UK: http://amzn.to/2IccFen CA: http://amzn.to/2G3y7BP AU: http://amzn.to/2HbjR9t B&N: http://bit.ly/2FjepVA Kobo: http://bit.ly/2G1jezP iBooks: https://apple.co/2I9XrGZ Google Play: http://bit.ly/2G4SRcn

EXCERPT

Once she was inside the elevator, she jabbed at the button again, this time trying to make the doors close. She really was shit out of luck this morning. Just as they began to slide together, a set of long, strong fingers slipped between them, and they slid open again. And there he was. He stepped inside with a smile and a nod, then pressed to go to the eighteenth floor. Shit. That was her floor. He couldn’t go there. “What do you need?” She stared at him blankly. “Need?” Could he somehow see inside her mind, see all the months of a dry spell that had gone on way too long? Or could he see the images floating inside her head? Images of what the two of them could do if the elevator somehow got stuck. The corners of his lips curved upward again. That just might be the sexiest smile she’d ever seen. “Which floor?” “Oh!” Well, wasn’t she an idiot? Her mind raced. She couldn’t get off the elevator with him. He might think she was following him. “Seventeen.” He hit the button, but before they started to move, the doors slid open again. Thank God for that! Two men and two women came in and turned to face the doors, leaving Grace and the Big Cat alone in the silent space behind them. Grace gripped the tray with her two coffee cups and stared determinedly at the numbers above the door. She’d always suspected this was the world’s slowest elevator, but this morning’s ride confirmed it. Every second was torture. She could smell him—all citrus and man. She’d swear he was looking at her, but she refused to allow herself to sneak a peek. He’d catch her. She tried looking down at the coffee cups, but that just made a strand of her hair fall across her face. She wrinkled her nose and tried to blow it away, then she froze. There were those long, strong fingers again. They brushed her cheek as they took the errant strand and tucked it behind her ear. If the heat had surged through her when he held the door open, then her blood was boiling in her veins right now. All the little hairs on the back of her neck stood up and sent shivers racing down her spine. Even her scalp tingled. She turned. How could she not? Those big brown eyes were twinkling with amusement. “I hope I didn’t overstep? You looked uncomfortable.” She shook her head mutely. What could she say, even if she could find the breath to speak? The elevator stopped, and she silently begged the people in front of her not to get out. They couldn’t leave her alone in here with this guy—she would not be responsible for her actions. To her relief, they didn’t. Instead, two more got in, and that was quite a crowd. Everyone shuffled back a little. She had no clue how it happened, but somehow, she ended up face to face with Big Cat. She was in the corner, and he was right there in front of her, staring down into her eyes, that quirky little smile playing on his face again. She’d had a laugh with Spider the other night when one of the customers had tried hitting on her in the coffee shop. She’d told Spider that her sexual desires were dormant. Hell, had she been wrong about that. Standing here, face-to-face with this guy, she discovered that her sexual desires weren’t just active—oh, no, they were rampant. She was grateful for the tray of coffee she was gripping. It gave her hands something to do that kept them from reaching up to touch his face, maybe sinking into his hair or even sliding around his waist. “Are you okay?” She nodded rapidly, meeting his gaze briefly. Even she heard the gasp she made when he rested his hand on her hip. What was he doing? You didn’t just do that to a stranger in a crowded elevator. “Are you sure?” He looked worried now. She looked down to where his hand rested on her hip. Except it wasn’t his hand—it was the purse the woman in front of her had slung over her shoulder. Grace couldn’t help it. She laughed. Wow, she needed to get laid. Okay, the guy was attractive, but he shouldn’t affect her this badly. “I’m fine, thanks. Have a great day.” She edged her way to the front and squeezed out through the doors before they had a chance to open fully on the seventeenth floor. She couldn’t help it. She had to look back before they closed. He’d made his way to the front, too. He met her gaze with a smile. Bye, Big Cat. She bid him a sad farewell. At least, in the real world, the world where she’d never see him again. She had a feeling her imagination would be seeing a lot more of him in the nights to come. She smiled back at him; there was no harm now. And he winked! The arrogant prick actually winked at her. She stood there staring as the doors slid shut, and then he was gone.

AUTHOR BIO

I'm SJ, a coffee addict, lover of chocolate and drinker of good red wines. I'm a lost soul and a hopeless romantic. Reading and writing are necessary parts of who I am. Though perhaps not as necessary as coffee! I can drink coffee without writing, but I can't write without coffee.

I grew up loving romance novels, my first boyfriends were book boyfriends, but life intervened, as it tends to do, and I wandered down the paths of non fiction for many years. My life changed completely a couple of years ago and I returned to Romance to find my escape.

I write 'Sweet n Steamy' stories because to me there is enough angst and darkness in real life. My favorite romances are happy escapes with a focus on fun, friendships and happily-ever-afters, just like the ones I write.

These days I live in beautiful Montana, the last best place. If I'm not reading or writing, you'll find me just down the road in the park - Yellowstone. I have deer, eagles and the occasional bear for company, and I like it that way :0)

AUTHOR LINKS

Website: http://www.sjmccoy.com Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/authorsjmccoy Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/authorsjmccoy Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/therealsjmccoy Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/7236373.S_J_McCoy

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