Wednesday, December 1, 2010

24 Days Before Christmas...


The first in the Magical Seduction series

My first erotic romance. I've always loved romance, the hotter the better.So when I decided to write about a winged woman, I went for something a little different than the traditional Celtic lore. I wanted to draw from my family's Italian background and found the Etruscans just waiting for me.

Justin Johannson knows there are mythical creatures living among us. He's been trying to prove their existence for years. Research gets a lot more interesting when he finds a winged woman in his bed. 

Etruscan folletta Scarlata is convinced Justin is in league with an evil businessman bent on capturing her for scientific study, which is so not going to happen. She decides that Justin needs to be taught a lesson to leave her and the rest of the mythical creatures in peace — after she has a little fun of her own. The beautiful folletta never expected to fall for a human and Justin is about to discover that true magic really does exist in the world. And in him.

EXCERPT: 

It was a good thing he was a genius, because he sure wouldn’t have been able to make his living as a car thief.

In theory, Justin knew how to hot-wire a car but in practice, it was a lot harder than it looked. 
He knew he had to take off the cover on the base of the steering wheel and attach two wires together to spark the ignition. But it didn’t always work the first time.
 
After he’d knocked out his gorgeous fairy—folletta, he had to remember that—he’d picked her up and ran down the two-lane road that led to the environmental center of Hawk Mountain Sanctuary.
 
Two cars sat in the lot—a thirty-year-old green Dodge Dart and a newer white Ford pickup. 
He chose the Dart, figuring it would have less computer hardware to contend with and its dark color would make them less of a target.
 
And it was open.
 
“Guess they’re not worried about anybody stealing you,” he muttered as he laid Scarlata across the huge leather backseat then opened the driver’s door and slid in.
 
It took him five minutes to get the damn car hot-wired. Every time the engine failed to catch, he thought he heard movement in the forest. Sweat beaded on his forehead—more from fear than exertion.
 
He couldn’t allow them to take Scarlata. If she were captured, it’d be his fault. She would have gotten away from them if he hadn’t been such a selfish bastard and knocked her out to keep her with him.
 
He couldn’t live with that. Besides, they’d have to kill him before they got to her.
 
Finally the engine turned over, sounding like a tank roaring to life.
 
“Yes,” he hissed through tightly clenched teeth as he jammed the gearshift into drive and spewed gravel out of the parking lot.
 
Speeding down the mountain, he pointed the car in the direction of his mother’s house in Leesport before he realized that would be one of the first places Bonnini would send men to search for him. Bonnini would know from Justin’s emergency contact sheet at work where his mom lived. He might already have the place under surveillance.
 
Shit, they couldn’t go there. And they couldn’t go to his apartment in Pottsville either.
 
And if he didn’t slow down, some cop was going to pull him over and discover an unconscious, naked folletta on his backseat.
 
Taking a deep breath, he eased his foot off the gas pedal, lowering his speed.
 
Where the hell were they going to hide?
 
“You are one stupid male.”
 
His hands jerked on the wheel, sending the car onto the shoulder before he straightened out. 
“Damn, woman. You nearly made me crash.”
 
He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw a very beautiful redhead glaring at him.
 
“Believe me,” she snapped, “after what I do to you, you will wish you had crashed.”
 
“Come on now, babe.” The grin he flashed her was cocky. “Is that any way to talk to the man who saved your life?”
 
Her mouth parted but apparently he’d made her speechless. Well, at least she couldn’t turn him into a frog.
 
Then again…she let loose a stream of what he figured was Italian. From the bite in her tone and the way her hands were going, he was pretty sure she was ripping into his hide.
 
He listened to the beauty of the language with half an ear while he tried to figure out where they could go that’d be safe.
 
After about five minutes, she finally stopped to take a breath and he had to admit he missed the sound of her sexy voice yelling at him. He actually had a hard-on.
 
She said something to him again in Italian and he released his grip on the steering wheel to raise one hand.
 
“English, hon. You gotta speak English if you want me to understand what the hell you’re saying.”
 
“Ooh.” She slapped him on the back of the head. Hell, even that turned him on. “Idiot! Where are we going?”
 
“Well, I’m not quite sure about that yet. Got any ideas?”
 
She snorted. “Actually, yes, if you had given me a chance to speak before you knocked me unconscious, I would have told you.”
 
“I thought you were going to ditch me.”
 
He glanced in the rearview mirror and saw her grimace in a purely feminine pout.
 
“I believe that would have been a mistake. Those men would have harmed you no matter that you did not know where I was. And I would not have been able to live with that.”
 

4 comments:

~Sia McKye~ said...

Love it that you put up an excerpt.

I'm only Italian by marriage, so I tend to stick with the whole Celtic thing--Scot, Irish, and Welsh.

You know I haven't read this one yet. I need to go order it.

Stephanie Julian said...

Thanks so much Sia. I hope you like it.

Sheena said...

I fell in love with this book.

Yep.

And then I hunted my way through bookstores and Amazon to find every other book in the series.

It was a brilliant intro book. Slid me nicely into a deliciously magical world that unfolded itself logically and quite believably.

Scarlata was feisty, fierce and fae and I understand just how charmed she was by Justin. How could a woman - magical or not- be anything but?

One of my favorites. Thanks for writing.

Stephanie Julian said...

Sheena, thank you so much for reading! I absolutely love to hear that you enjoy my stories. It makes it all totally worth it. THANK YOU!