Six paragraphs from
From Out of the Shadows
An erotic fantasy romance novel
Available from Whiskey Creek Press Torrid
Croat was a Lupan, one of the half-man, half-beast creatures long thought to be extinct or fabricated from fairy tales. Lupan were folklore, nothing more than a myth.
Tora was a Sensitive. Her kind really existed, and normal people feared Sensitives because it was common knowledge that all Sensitives were evil and practiced the dark magicks.
Captured and thrown together inside Baron Agrino’s dungeon, they discovered a connection between them that defied all reason, and a love that transcended all boundaries.
But is their love strong enough to stop the baron from what he’ll do with every Lupan he plans to capture? Or, worse, what he’ll do with Tora once he learns what she is?
Warning! Contains torture, imprisonment, severe beatings, nasty bad guys, public nudity, molten wax, old wives' tales, forest folk, bad horsemanship, and lots of pissed off townspeople.
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1. The last armed man gave the still figure a final kick before he left, locking the door behind him. With the only source of light gone, the cell once again grew pitch black. Her quiet world shifted back into place—only now she was sharing it with another person. A person who had been beaten nearly to death. From where she sat, Tora could hear the poor man’s labored breathing. Every few seconds he would groan in pain. Her heart went out to him.
2. The baron’s men advanced toward them, rifles ready as they proceeded to ring the couple. Someone ordered for a net to be brought, and one pair of boots disappeared from Croat’s line of vision. At the sound of a gun being cocked, he flattened his ears against his head and bared his bloody fangs. A growl of hatred reverberated in his throat as he raised his head to stare at them. To dare them; to threaten them. He could feel Tora quaking beneath him as they both waited for the inevitable to happen.
3. “I hear her screaming in my head,” he gasped, fighting the terror and agony he was receiving from her. “I can feel my hands, like they’ve been covered in fire.” Looking up at the elderly woman, Croat said, “For a moment there, I was free of her. I think she was unconscious, but it was like whatever cord was running between us had been cut. I was finally free of her…and it was a feeling I never want to feel again.”
4. His touch was overwhelming. At no time had her mother explained that a connection between a Sensitive and her life partner would become a two-way thing. At that moment, when it was taking all of her strength to keep herself conscious, it was Croat who was feeding her with his own emotional power, helping her survive; making her feel alive and sane. His body was like the sun, pouring warmth and energy into every dark crevasse in her withered psyche. It signaled a promise, beckoning and pleading for her to relent in order for him to claim her. She could feel herself trying to answer his silent, primitive call. It was a call she couldn’t explain or identify, yet she realized it was provoking something new from her. A new and different kind of feeling she’d never experienced before in her life.
5. “When a Sensitive touches the one who will become her lifelong partner, that connection forms. She has no warning it will happen, and neither does he. But when it does, that connection is what bonds them together for life. But a regular Sensitive’s bond with her husband, although it is lifelong, does weaken as the distance between them grows, should the two become separated.” Deelaht gently shook her head. “Not so for a Beginner. Be it a mile, or a hundred miles, you will be as aware of her as she will be of you, just as if you were standing next to each other.” She bit her lower lip then added, “And anything that happens to either of you will be felt by the other just as strongly.”
6. She stood before them, hands curled into fists at the end of ramrod-straight arms pressed by her sides. “We’re a game to the baron. We’re an exciting hunt on a boring afternoon. He has been taking men, women, and children from the surrounding villages on a regular basis and doing gods know what with them. Do you honestly believe, now that he knows you really exist, that he’s not going to put every man he can on your trail to try and find you? Dearest heavens, you were a myth! When normal people find out the myth is real, can you imagine the terror he could incite? They nearly killed Croat, and tried to make him feed on me because the baron knows how invincible he’ll be if he has a whole army of Lupan.”
