Wednesday 15 October 2014

WIP IT UP Wednesday: A Starlet in Venice



Hey, a new-to-me blog hop! Sure, why not? I'm always happy to share what I'm working on. 

So, technically, A Starlet in Venice isn't the actual work in progress right now. But it is the next, upcoming release, and I'm super excited by it. It's got BDSM and romance, friends becoming lovers, and so much more. 

I personally don't enjoy reading sex scenes without context. I must care about the H/h before the sex scene, else I'm not fussed. So, I'm just going to share the Prologue. (Note - Starlet is currently in the hands of my editor, and this is the pre-edited version.)



A Starlet in Venice (Nights in Venice Book 3) 

Prologue

Liam:

I looked at the woman who’d just been unceremoniously bundled into my hands. She was masked, but the tears trickled down her cheeks and she couldn’t seem to stop weeping.

For fuck’s sake, Antonio, I thought irritably. Sure, Antonio Moretti was a good boss, but since when did he think it was my job to clean up his women problems? Because this woman he just shoved my way was Tatiana Cordova, widely rumoured through all of Venice to be his mistress. And Antonio had taken off in search of Lucia Petrucci.

It seemed that it was my job to explain to this woman that her lover had just replaced her.

I muttered another curse at Antonio, but I had three sisters, and I was a sucker for a crying woman. “Come with me,” I said gently to her. I placed my hand in the small of her back and steered her outside. We walked on the narrow cobblestone streets in the darkness, with the moonlight intermittently shining down on her face, making each tear look like a sparkling diamond.

I stayed with her while she cried, and I could tell the precise moment her composure returned. I watched her walls come up, and her shoulders straighten.

For some reason, the walls bothered me. I wanted to tear them down and find the woman underneath, the sweet, forlorn woman that I’d ached to comfort. Because I could only bear to see a woman cry in a session. Never outside.

“He’s just a guy, you know?” I said in Italian. “Time heals all wounds.”

She removed the mask and shook her long blonde hair free, giving me a puzzled look as she did so. “I’m missing something here,” she replied in fluent English. “What are you talking about?”

Oh fuck. Did I have to tell her she’d been replaced by Lucia Petrucci? Heaven help me, I didn’t want her to cry again. Or was she just pretending, putting on a proud face while falling apart inside? That, I understood. My sisters were exactly the same way. You cried privately. In public, you were stone and ice and untouchable.

“Antonio,” I tried again. “In the end, he’s just a guy. We all are. Nothing special, nothing unique.”

Her sapphire blue eyes sparkled with merriment. “You think I’m in tears because of Antonio and Lucia?” Her lips twitched. “I’m delighted for the two of them.”

“Really?” I sounded completely skeptical.

“Really,” she assured me.

“Then you’ll have no problem having dinner with me tomorrow night?” I challenged her, and the merriment faded from her eyes.

“Liam Callahan, right?” she asked. “The manager at Casanova?”

I nodded. So she knew who I was.

“Let me be blunt with you, Liam,” she said. “Men solicit sex from me all the time. You can’t imagine how tiresome it is. So if you want to fuck me, you might as well skip the dinner and the fancy talk, and just come on out and tell me what you want. It’ll save us both some time.”

“What if I don’t want to have sex with you?” I asked her. “What if I just want to have dinner?”

She looked completely disbelieving, and with reason. Tatiana Cordova had a body that was made for sex, beautiful and lush and soft. I was lying when I when I told her I didn’t want to sleep with her. But I also wanted something more. “You know what I do for a living,” I said, and she nodded.

“In that case,” I said. “You’ll understand that sex is just as easy for me as it is for you.” An unreadable expression flashed across her face at that sentence, illuminated by the moon coming out from behind a cloud. “I want something I can’t get at Casanova.”

“Antonio assures me you can get anything at Casanova.” Her voice was rich with humour and slight mockery.

I smiled at her tone. “Almost anything,” I replied. “I just want someone to hang out with. Dinner. Friendship. Conversation. Nothing more. I miss normal human interaction.” Five years of constantly available sex, and I ached for something, anything else.


Her eyes softened. “Dinner,” she said quietly, “tomorrow night. Dinner and conversation, I can do. As for friendship? We’ll see.” 

A Starlet in Venice releases Oct 21, 2014. 

Blurb:

Every single man who looks at me wants to fuck me. To them, I am merely a sexy body, tits and pussy and ass, playing a leading role in their wet dreams. I am never anything more.

Except Liam. Liam Callahan wants only friendship from me, and I should be delighted. I certainly don’t want anything else from him. I don’t want to be bent over his lap and spanked. I don’t want to be tied up and flogged, and I definitely don’t want him to fuck me.

Do I?

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2 comments:

  1. intriguing :) this is so going on my TBR

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  2. Tara, welcome to #wipitup! It's great to have you here.
    Oh my gosh, I love how this story is starting out. Maybe cleaning up his boss's mess will end up to be his good fortune. Since neither of them really wants sex, or at least that's what they are both implying, I wonder what they're going to do after dinner?
    I hope you enjoyed wip it up, Tara because I'm looking forward to more. ☺

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